Europol has introduced the takedown of distributed denial of service (DDoS)-for-hire companies that had been used to launch hundreds of cyber-attacks internationally.
In reference to the operation, Polish authorities have arrested 4 people and the USA has seized 9 domains which can be related to the now-defunct platforms.
“The suspects are believed to be behind six separate stresser/booter companies that enabled paying clients to flood web sites and servers with malicious site visitors — knocking them offline for as little as EUR 10,” Europol stated in a press release.
The companies, named cfxapi, cfxsecurity, neostress, jetstress, quickdown and zapcut, are stated to have been instrumental in launching widespread assaults on colleges, authorities companies, companies, and gaming platforms between 2022 and 2025.
Europol stated the platforms supplied “slick person interfaces,” enabling malicious actors with little to no technical experience to orchestrate DDoS assaults by merely getting into a goal IP tackle, selecting the kind of assault, and paying a price.
Stresser companies, sometimes marketed on underground boards, are sometimes disguised as respectable stress-testing instruments however are designed to disrupt entry to net assets by letting their clients unleash a flood of faux site visitors towards a goal website, making them inaccessible to actual customers.
“In contrast to conventional botnets, which require the management of huge numbers of contaminated gadgets, stresser/booter companies industrialise DDoS assaults by way of centralised, rented infrastructure,” Europol famous.
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| QuickDown Pricing Plans as of July 15, 2024 |
Based on snapshots captured on the Web Archive, cfxsecurity, hosted on the domains cfxsecurity[.]wager and “cfxsecurity.cc,” marketed itself because the “#1 stress testing service” and that it offered “complete stress check, guaranteeing your web site and companies are able to climate any storm.”
The service supplied three plans, Starter for $20/month, Premium for $50/month, and Enterprise for $130/month. QuickDown (“quickdown[.]professional”), likewise, priced its equipment for anyplace between $20/month to $379/month.
Cloud safety firm Radware, in a report printed in August 2024, revealed that QuickDown is amongst a brand new crop of stresser companies which have adopted a hybrid structure combining each botnets and devoted servers. QuickDown is claimed to have launched a “Botnet addon and new plans associated to the Botnet community” in September 2023.
The newest motion, carried out in collaboration with Dutch and German authorities, is a part of an ongoing effort referred to as Operation PowerOFF that goals to dismantle infrastructure facilitating DDoS-for-hire exercise.
In December 2024, a set of 27 stresser companies had been taken offline, alongside asserting costs towards six completely different people within the Netherlands and the U.S.
