Distributed denial of attacks aren’t new and have been around for a while now, and are typically favored by hackers who are looking to disrupt services and crash websites. Unsurprisingly such services have also been offered to those willing to part with their money, although thankfully it seems that the FBI has managed to bring down quite a number of them.
According to reports, it appears that the FBI has managed to shut down about 15 DDoS-for-hire websites, and have also managed to arrest three people who were found to be operating some of these websites. Matthew Gatrel and Juan Martinez both face charges for allegedly conspiring to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, while David Bukowski has been accused of aiding and abetting computer intrusion.
It seems that these are some of the bigger websites too, with the Justice Department claiming that Quantum Stresser, one of the websites, had over 80,000 subscriptions, and had been used 50,000 times for “actual or attempted” attacks around the world. Of course whether or not this will deter hackers remains to be seen, but much like piracy-based websites, the closure of one simply results in a void that another hacker would be more than happy to fill, but for now we suppose it should be celebrated as a victory.