On Monday, I profiled asylumbooter.com, one of several increasingly public DDoS-for-hire services posing as Web site “stress testing” services. Today, we’ll look at ragebooter.net, yet another attack service except for one secret feature which sets it apart from the competition: According the site’s proprietor, ragebooter.net includes a hidden backdoor that lets the FBI monitor customer activity.
Aaron Wendel opened the doors of his business to some unexpected visitors on the morning of Mar. 16, 2011. The chief technology officer of Kansas City based hosting provider Wholesale Internet found that two U.S. marshals, a pair of computer forensics experts and a Microsoft lawyer had come calling, armed with papers allowing them to enter the facility and to commandeer computer hard drives and portions of the hosting firm’s network. Anyone attempting to interfere would be subject to arrest and prosecution.
Microsoft’s lawyers this week engineered a pair of important takedowns, one laudable and the other highly-charged. The software giant orchestrated a legal sneak attack against the Web servers controlling the Waledac botnet, a major distributor of junk e-mail. In an unrelated and more controversial move, Redmond convinced an ISP to shutter a popular whistleblower Web site for hosting a Microsoft surveillance compliance document.
