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Law enforcement agencies in the US and Poland take part in an international crackdown on distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) providers.
The United States Department of Justice announced earlier this week that it had taken part in a successful operation to seize and shut down nine of the most active DDoS-for-hire services.
In addition to seizing the domains, Poland’s Central Cybercrime Bureau arrested four administrators responsible for running the DDoS operations, with assistance from US law enforcement authorities.
Also known as booter services, some of the seized DDoS operations posed as legitimate “stresser” services, or a legitimate tool to test network reliability. However, authorities believe the DDoS operators to be responsible for hundreds of thousands of attacks worldwide.
“Booter services facilitate cyber attacks that harm victims and compromise everyone’s ability to access the internet,” Bill Essayli, US attorney for the Central District of California, said in a 7 May statement.
“This week’s sweeping law enforcement activity is a major step in our ongoing efforts to eradicate criminal conduct that threatens the internet’s infrastructure and our ability to function in a digital world.”
The seizures and arrests were part of a global operation between multiple law enforcement agencies and private partners, including Akamai, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, Digital Ocean, Flashpoint, Google, PayPal, the University of Cambridge, and Unit 221B.
“The enforcement actions launched today, made possible by enduring partnerships between law enforcement and private industry, represent continued pressure on DDoS-for-hire services and the cyber criminals and hacktivists who use them,” special agent in charge Kenneth DeChellis of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), Cyber Field Office, said.
“This success demonstrates the resolve of the DCIS to relentlessly pursue those who target our warfighters and their information systems.”
At the same time as the seizure operation, Homeland Security Investigations, DCIS, and the Netherlands Police have launched an online advertising campaign – triggered by entering certain keywords into search engines – aimed at deterring potential DDoS-for-hire customers and educating the public.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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