The U.S. government has shut down 13 websites that were providing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks for rent. This is a phase of Operation PowerOFF, a global effort to eliminate illicit DDoS-for-hire infrastructures.
A similar “sweep” in December 2022 shut down 48 services that helped customers execute DDoS assaults against institutions including K-12 and higher education networks, banks, and government websites for a fee.
Ten of the thirteen domains that were taken over are “reincarnations” of defunct booter or stresser sites. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has reported that booter services are thriving because they facilitate cybercrime with little effort on the side of the user.
These services not only cause harm to their victims by throttling or otherwise degrading their internet connection, but they may also entirely cut off the internet access of other customers of the same ISP who use the same connection point.
The DoJ has seized domain names and issued guilty pleas from four of the six people indicted in December 2022 for their roles in running the services.
