The world biggest DDoS-for-Hire service was stopped after the Croatian Police arrested the teenage mastermind hacker. At the webstresser.org the registered users could launch a DDoS attack against their targets for €15 or BitCoin. This way technical skills weren’t required for starting such an attack.
DDoS attacks typically flood web servers with traffic to take them down. So-called stressers sell those attacks as a service, offering to take down customers’ selected targets for a small fee or providing direct access to a simple DDoS tool. According to investigators working on Operation Power Off, webstresser.org appeared to be the biggest of all such services.
DDoS hits emanating from webstresser.org targeted banks, government institutions, police forces, schools and the gaming industry, investigators said. And Americans made up the majority of both targets and customers on webstresser.org, according to Europol’s lead case coordinator, who asked to remain anonymous in speaking with Forbes exclusively ahead of today’s announcement. “It’s become one of the most important [DDoS stressers] on the market,” he said.
The website had 136 000 registered users and more than 4 million attacks were launched. In November, UK’s biggest banks were the victims of this cybercrime. Also, other government institutions, the business sector and gaming industry were targets either.
The administrator can get a jail term 1 to 8 years and the authorities have also taken against the top users of this marketplace in many countries.