Biggest DDoS-for-hire-service dismantled
Webstresser.org, which was considered the biggest DDoS-for-hire-service in the world, was dismantled in ‘Operation Power OFF’, Europol said in an official statement. The illegal service was shut down, its infrastructure was seized in the Netherlands, the US and Germany; and its alleged administrators were arrested in the United Kingdom, Croatia, Canada and Serbia. Further measures were taken against the top users of this marketplace. The investigation was led by the Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit and the UK National Crime Agency (NCA), with support from Europol and national law enforcement agencies from Serbia, Croatia, Spain, Italy, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and the United States of America. The platform sold 4 million Distributed Denial of Service attacks against online services of banks, government institutions, police forces and the gaming world to its 136,000 registered users. The UK National Crime Agency stated that individuals with little or no technical knowledge could rent the Webstresser service to launch crippling DDOS attacks across the world.