Europol: 27 DDoS booters shut down ahead of Christmas attacks
Europol's PowerOFF operation has taken 27 more DDoS booters offline. Three admins were arrested and 300 users identified.
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In a worldwide collaboration, law enforcement officers prevented a Christmas "vacation tradition" of cyber criminals at the end of the year: launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on websites to take them offline, Europol officials explain slightly smugly. This was done as part of the international "PowerOFF" operation. The authorities have now confiscated a total of 27 of the most popular platforms for carrying out such attacks.
These platforms are also known as "booters" or "stressers", the officials explain. They enable criminals and hacktivists to flood targets with illegal traffic, making websites and other web-based services inaccessible. A multi-faceted operation has now been launched, with Europol coordinating law enforcement officers from 15 countries to target all levels of these criminal activities.
Successful strike
The booter and stresser websites taken offline include zdstresser.net, orbitalstress.net and starkstresser.net. Three administrators were also arrested in Germany and France. Furthermore, more than 300 users who were planning operations on the platforms were identified, writes Europol.
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Operation PowerOFF not only focuses on dismantling the infrastructure used by the attackers, but also works proactively to prevent further incidents. To this end, law enforcement is launching publicity campaigns aimed at individuals involved in such activities. The campaign aims to highlight the consequences of DDoS attacks and target potential offenders when they are most active, namely online. To this end, the officials are relying on Google and YouTube advertising.
In addition to these digital interventions, other methods are to be used: "knocking and talking", more than 250 warning letters and more than 2,000 emails are to reach the users of the illegal services. Operation PowerOFF has not yet come to an end, but is set to continue.
Operation PowerOFF has been running since 2022 and has had repeated successes. At the beginning of November, for example, two men were arrested in Hesse for allegedly operating a drug marketplace called "FlightRCS" on the one hand and the DDoS platform "Dstat.CC" on the other.
(dmk)
