Collaborate Disseminate
Webstresser[.]org, a DDoS-for-hire market believed to be behind at least 4 million cyberattacks around the world, has served up its last internet-paralyzing traffic tsunami. Continue reading Europol Smacks Down World’s Largest DDoS-for-Hire Market
Last week we looked at reports from China and Israel about a new “Internet of Things” malware strain called “Reaper” that researchers said infected more than a million organizations by targeting newfound security weaknesses in countless Internet routers, security cameras and digital video recorders (DVRs). Now some botnet experts are calling on people to stop the “Reaper Madness,” saying the actual number of IoT devices infected with Reaper right now is much smaller.
Arbor Networks said it believes the current actual size of the Reaper botnet fluctuates between 10,000 and 20,000 bots total. Arbor notes that this can change any time. Continue reading Fear the Reaper, or Reaper Madness?
Two young Israeli men alleged by this author to have co-founded vDOS — until recently the largest and most profitable cyber attack-for-hire service online — were arrested and formally indicted this week in Israel on conspiracy and hacking charges. Continue reading Alleged vDOS Operators Arrested, Charged
A new report proves the value of following the money in the fight against dodgy cybercrime services known as “booters” or “stressers” — virtual hired muscle that can be rented to knock nearly any website offline.
Last fall, two 18-year-old Israeli men were arrested for allegedly running a vDOS, perhaps the most successful booter service of all time. The pair were detained within hours of being named in a story on this blog as the co-proprietors of the service (this site would later suffer a three-day outage as a result of an attack that was alleged to have been purchased in retribution for my reporting on vDOS).
That initial vDOS story was based on data shared by an anonymous source who had hacked vDOS and obtained its private user and attack database. The story showed how the service made approximately $600,000 over just two of the four years it was in operation. Most of those profits came in the form of credit card payments via PayPal.
But prior to vDOS’s takedown in September 2016, the service was already under siege thanks to work done by a group of academic researchers who teamed up with PayPal to identify and close accounts that vDOS and other booter services were using to process customer payments. The researchers found that their interventions cut profits in half for the popular booter service, and helped reduce the number of attacks coming out of it by at least 40 percent. Continue reading Following the Money Hobbled vDOS Attack-for-Hire Service
Perhaps the most bustling marketplace on the Internet where people can compare and purchase so-called “booter” and “stresser” subscriptions — attack-for-hire services designed to knock Web sites offline — announced last week that it has permanently banned the sale and advertising of these services. Continue reading Hackforums Shutters Booter Service Bazaar
It may soon become easier for Internet service providers to anticipate and block certain types of online assaults launched by Web-based attack-for-hire services known as “booter” or “stresser” services, new research released today suggests. Continue reading Are the Days of “Booter” Services Numbered?
Last week, KrebsOnSecurity detailed how BackConnect Inc. — a company that defends victims against large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks — admitted to hijacking hundreds of Internet addresses from a European Internet service provider in order to glean information about attackers who were targeting BackConnect. According to an exhaustive analysis of historic Internet records, the BackConnect appears to have a history of such “hacking back” activity. Continue reading DDoS Mitigation Firm Has History of Hijacks
DDoS or Booter services have been around for a while, but VDoS-s.com was a particularly slick (and shameless) one with a content marketing strategy and active social media accounts. Two Israeli men were arrested for running the service after ironically being hacked by a security researcher. They called their service a ‘Stresser’ and claimed to…
Read the full post at darknet.org.uk
Continue reading Two Israeli Men Arrested For Running VDoS-s.com DDoS Service
vDOS — a so-called “booter” service that has earned in excess of $600,000 over the past two years helping customers coordinate more than 150,000 so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks designed to knock Web sites offline — has been massively hacked, spilling secrets about tens of thousands of paying customers and their targets.
The vDOS database, obtained by KrebsOnSecurity.com at the end of July 2016, points to two young men in Israel as the principle owners and masterminds of the attack service, with support services coming from several young hackers in the United States.
The vDOS database, obtained by KrebsOnSecurity.com, points to two young men in Israel as the principle owners and masterminds of the attack service, with support services coming from several young hackers in the United States.
The vDOS database, obtained by KrebsOnSecurity.com, points to two young men in Israel as the principle owners and masterminds of the attack service, with support services coming from several young hackers in the United States. Continue reading Israeli Online Attack Service ‘vDOS’ Earned $600,000 in Two Years
Far too many otherwise intelligent and talented software developers these days apparently think they can get away with writing, selling and supporting malicious software and then couching their commerce as a purely legitimate enterprise. Here’s the story of how I learned the real-life identity of Canadian man who’s laboring under that same illusion as proprietor of one of the most popular and affordable tools for hacking into someone else’s computer. Continue reading Canadian Man Behind Popular ‘Orcus RAT’