Feds take down DDoS bosses
Dirty deeds in the digital age can mean various forms of internet sabotage, but one of the cybercriminal’s favorite ploys is the DDoS attack, the tactic of infecting a mass amount of computers and devices so that together they become a botnet which can overwhelm a targeted domain with traffic, forcing it to freeze up. Someone who wants to dip into this criminal endeavor could engage a “booter” service, so named because it results in the targeted website being “booted” from online to off. Essentially, these are DDoS-for-hire sites, and up until this week, the most popular ones were Downthem, Ampnode, and Quantum Stress. That’s no longer true as the FBI has seized all three sites, as well as many ancillary ones, and busted three men running the operations.
