A pair of 18-year-old Israeli teens were arrested for operating a hacking tool, that created a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, and would flood sites with so much malicious internet traffic that they would crash. The teens were accused of running vDOS, a “booter” service which allows people to pay to use it to attack other websites and services. The two were exploited when their own server was hacked, leaking their information. The pair refused to attack any Israeli-based sites. These “booters”, allow people without any technical skills engage in DDoS attacks. This is fairly interesting, because now, if you have a grudge, you can pay to have someone cyber-attacked. These DDoS attacks were generally for ransom, and publications state, roughly $600,000 was earned by its operators.
It’s a shame really, although they caught these guys, there are still so many people out their that sell these type of services. They are available all over the darkweb. Nothing the authorities can do other than to continue looking for these types of people, but even if they end up being caught, there are other alternatives.
Shain,
Very interesting article. This is very scary that someone can now just pay to perform a DDoS attack without having any hacking knowledge. This can lead to many organizations across the world getting attacked because of something like this. Once again this goes to show how the constantly evolving security landscape can be harmful to both large and small organizations.
Yanni,
That is crazy they were teenagers and the money they made to attack these websites. I have never heard of a booter service before, I will do more research on that.
Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and now Hacking as a Service (HaaS)! I’m also glad they caught these criminals, but I agree there are still many services like this out there. I read an article a few months ago that said you could pay a hacker service to obtain an e-mail password. The going rate for that was about $100!
We’ll never be able to eliminate all of these threats, but a defense in depth strategy for cyber security can help to mitigate the risk.