On some corners of the internet, you can pay for services that attack legitimate websites to try to disrupt their service. \u00a0One of these sites, vDOS, was recently busted up by authorities in Israel. \u00a0They arrested the alleged owners, two 18 year olds who have been running the site for four years. \u00a0The site is accused of running DDOS attacks that earned the owners over half a billion dollars. They were found out through multiple sleuthing methods. \u00a0They refered to each other on facebook by their hacker call signs. \u00a0Their phone number was set up to receive texts from customer service notifications.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0It shows what site was targeted by what username, when, and for how long.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n