Europol announces takedown of major DDoS-for-hire network

Date:
Thu, 12 Dec 2024 10:18:17 +0000

Description:
Europol has disrupted a number of major DDoS booster sites, used to launch attacks during holiday period.

FULL STORY

Europol has taken down 27 booster and stressor networks used to conduct distributed denial-of-service ( DDoS ) attacks in a global operation
involving 15 countries.

The operation, code named PowerOFF, targeted botnet-for-hire websites
including orbitalstress.net, zdstresser.net, and starkstresser.net.

Three arrests were made against stressor site administrators, with over 300 site users identified by law enforcement.

DDoS sites taken down

PowerOFFs main mission was to disrupt the holiday tradition for
cybercriminals of targeting websites in the run up to Christmas, which can cause, severe financial loss, reputational damage and operational chaos for their victims.

These platforms enabled cybercriminals and hacktivists to flood targets with illegal traffic, rendering websites and other web-based services
inaccessible, the Europol statement said.

A statement from the Dutch Politie said four suspects between the age of 22
and 26 are being prosecuted for their involvement in hundreds of DDoS
attacks.

Europol and other law enforcement agencies have stepped up their efforts to tackle DDoS networks, with the UKs National Crime Agency (NCA), the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) taking down the Digitalstress booster site - widely recognized as the world's largest DDoS site pre-takedown.

Europol also disrupted hundreds of servers used to distribute a cracked
version of the Cobalt Strike pentesting software earlier this year in a combined operation involving law enforcement from Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, the UK, US, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Japan, and South Korea that targeted 690 IP addresses across 27 countries.

CloudStrike additionally released data showing it recently disrupted the
worlds biggest DDoS attack in September 2024, which was recorded peaking at 3.8Tbps.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/europol-announces-takedown-of-major-ddo s-for-hire-network

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