Alleged vDOS Proprietors Arrested in Israel
On some corners of the internet, you can pay for services that attack legitimate websites to try to disrupt their service. One of these sites, vDOS, was recently busted up by authorities in Israel. They arrested the alleged owners, two 18 year olds who have been running the site for four years. The site is accused of running DDOS attacks that earned the owners over half a billion dollars. They were found out through multiple sleuthing methods. They refered to each other on facebook by their hacker call signs. Their phone number was set up to receive texts from customer service notifications.
The database of who had been paying for the hacks also became publicly available. The data contains attempted DDOS’s that weren’t wiped from their logs. It shows what site was targeted by what username, when, and for how long.
Interestingly, after the site went down the site domain was hacked through a BGP hijack. The company responsible said it was in response to their servers being attacked by vDOS and hoping that would lessen the traffic. The company CEO said this was just a defensive maneuver but I would still classify this as offense.
It seems a lot of fighting is going on all the time on the internet and the only defense might be to stay educated on all the new ways hackers are attacking system. Sometimes, going on the offense may pay off too if done correctly.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/alleged-vdos-proprietors-arrested-in-israel/
I find it interesting that they gave them selves away through Facebook. Reminds me of the story from a few years ago about the drug smuggler who came to the attention of authorities when he posted pictures of his money counting machines,
Wade
I think it was interesting that cyber attackers were unaware of the risk of exposing themselves on social media. They should have the knowledge of how social media can leak personal information through either users themselves or malicious hackers. They didn’t even cover their tracks carefully and clean their attack logs frequently. One thing I was surprised was it took 4 years to catch the two young vDOS proprietors, which it was much longer than I thought. I don’t know if it is true that it usually takes so long to catch cyber attackers.