- Under Operation PowerOFF, the DoJ and the FBI continued to disrupt DDoS-for-hire services, advertised as booter or stressor services.
- Four previously arrested defendants pleaded guilty to federal charges, including their involvement in booter service operations.
This week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the seizure of more than a dozen domains associated with distributed denial of service or DDoS-for-hire services. The FBI led the charge against the infrastructure, designed to cater to vengeful and often malicious intent.
Under Operation PowerOFF, the DoJ and the FBI continued to disrupt DDoS-for-hire services, advertised as booter or stressor services. In total, the FBI seized 13 domains. This is in addition to the 48 domains seized in December 2022 under Operation PowerOFF.
DDoS-for-hire operations are advertised as stressor (i.e., stress-testing the underlying bandwidth) services to lend an air of legitimacy. The FBI’s suspicion arose last year when they observed that the communication between site administrators and customers indicated that the latter party wasn’t buying the DDoS services to stress-test their own infrastructure.
This time, the FBI performed a sting operation with new accounts with each booter service. Law enforcement even paid in cryptocurrency for subscription plans. “Each service was tested by using the website to launch DDoS attacks on computers controlled by the FBI,†the FBI said.
“The FBI then observed the effects of the attacks on their ‘victim’ computers, confirming that the booter websites operated as advertised. In some cases, despite the ‘victim’ computer being on a network with a large amount of capacity, the test attack was so powerful that it completely severed the internet connection.â€
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The DoJ noted that ten of the 13 domains that were disrupted were “reincarnations†of the previous ones. For example, cyberstress.us (seized in December 2022) reemerged now as cyberstress.org.
“In addition to harming victims by disrupting or degrading access to the internet, attacks from booter services can also completely sever internet connections for other customers served by the same internet service provider via a shared connection point.â€
BleepingComputer obtained the list of the 13 seized domains and related information:
|
Sr. No. |
Booter Domain Name | Previously Seized Domain | Domain Registrar Location | Web Hosting Location | Online Payment Processor |
| 1 | cyberstress.org | cyberstress.us | U.S. | Canada |
NA |
|
2 |
exoticbooter.com | exotic-booter.com | U.S. | Russia | NA |
| 3 | layerstress.net | NA | U.S. | Portugal |
NA |
|
4 |
orbitalstress.xyz | NA | U.S. | France | NA |
| 5 | redstresser.io | redstresser.cc | U.S. | Ukraine |
NA |
|
6 |
silentstress.wtf | silentstress.net | U.S. | Portugal | NA |
| 7 | sunstresser.net | sunstresser.com | U.S. | Russia |
NA |
|
8 |
silent.to | silentstress.net | U.S. | Portugal | NA |
| 9 | mythicalstress.net | NA | France | U.S. |
Brazil |
|
10 |
dreams-stresser.io | dream-stresser.io | Hong Kong | Canada | U.S. |
| 11 | stresserbest.io | stresser.best | Italy | Netherlands |
U.S. |
|
12 |
stresserus.io | stresser.best | Italy | Netherlands | U.S. |
| 13 | quantus-stress.org | quantum-stresser.net | U.S./Canada | Canada |
U.S. |
Additionally, four defendants — Jeremiah Sam Evans Miller, aka “John The Dev,†Angel Manuel Colon Jr., aka “Anonghost720,†Shamar Shattock, and Cory Anthony Palmer — all of whom were arrested late last year also pleaded guilty to federal charges, including their involvement in carrying out booter service operations.
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