US Department of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has announced that it has seized over 15 internet domains and has charged around 14 men associated with firms that offer cyber attacks-on-demand.
The law enforcement agency has added in its statement that the firms were found indulging in malicious practices such as spreading malware and launching ransomware and DDoS attacks on several computer networks related to financial institutions, universities, internet services providers, government organizations and gaming platforms.
Some of the domains in the sized list include the world’s biggest “Booter” or Stresser services providing domain services such as critical-boot.com, ragebooter.com, downthem.org, and quantumstress.net.
Highly placed sources of Cybersecurity insiders report that the law enforcement engaged in the activity after receiving criminal complaints from individuals and companies operating in California and Alaska.
“As such companies offer services at very low cost, individuals and companies are seeking help to drop the websites of their competitors out of vengeance”, said a federal law enforcement official who liked to report in an anonymous way.
According to a 33-page affidavit in support of the warrant filed in the US District Court of California, two people’s names have been publicized. Matthew Gatrel, 30, of St. Charles, Illinois, and Juan Martinez, 25, of Pasadena, California were found guilty for hosting services in the name of Ampnode and Downthem and so were slapped with charges of computer fraud and abuse act.
Downthem was found offering cyber attack on-demand services in between Oct’14 to Nov’18 and had managed to bag more than 2,000 customer subscriptions for launching more than 200,000 Distributed denial of service aka DDoS attacks.
The charging document also highlights another name called David Bukoski, 23, from Hanover Township, Pennsylvania, for operating Quantum Stresser, one of the longest-running DDoS services in operation. FBI claims that the services had more than 80k customer subscriptions dating back to 2012 and has so far launched over 50,000 attacks on news agencies, government organizations and some of the multinational corporate companies.
Note- FBI arrested all the individuals and seized their online services only after verifying the records of services being offered by them with valid proof.
