Tech headlines are screaming the big picture of this story: Europol and investigators around the globe just shut down the world's largest DDoS-for-hire website and network.
It was called WebStresser, and although the site is gone, Google results live on—bragging about booters, stressers, and DDoS:
3 key things revealed in the DDoS takedown
1. DDoS-for-hire is just as cheap as InfoSec thought.
Europol says you could rent the company's booters and stressers for as little as 15 Euros a month. That's just $18.24 US at today's exchange rate, or $23.43 Canadian.
2. It's scary to think how many people used some version of this DDoS-for-hire service.
Europol investigators say they discovered more than 136,000 registered users, who used the service to launch at least 4 million recorded attacks.
3. The DDoS-for-hire bust reveals the worldwide nature of cybercrime.
- DDoS-for-hire infrastructure: Europol says, "The illegal service was shut down and its infrastructure seized in the Netherlands, the US, and Germany."
- DDoS-for-hire administrators: "The administrators were located in the United Kingdom, Croatia, Canada, and Serbia."
- The biggest users of DDoS-for-hire service: "Further measures were taken against the top users of this marketplace in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Croatia, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Hong Kong."
As we said, definitely a worldwide issue.
It took law enforcement agencies in 12 countries to make this happen, under the Europol code name "Operation Power Off."
And what was the world's largest DDoS-for-hire network is indeed powered off.
Will this put a dent in the number DDoS attacks around the globe, or simply shift profits to another DDoS service that grabs the available market share?
That remains to be seen.
