We Are Running Fake DDoS-for-hire Sites To Collect Details On Cybercriminals – UK Police

If you want to conduct a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) assault to take down a website but lack the technical skills to accomplish it yourself, there is bad news.

You might truly be giving your information to the authorities rather than employing cybercriminals to flood a website with unwelcome traffic or exclude rivals from a video game.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) of the UK has disclosed that it has developed several websites that advertise themselves as “DDoS-for-hire” or “booter” services.

Instead of receiving access to cybercriminal tools when individuals register for the website, NCA investigators gather personal data.

We Are Running Fake DDoS-for-hire Sites To Collect Details On Cybercriminals – UK Police

The NCA made the decision to modify the landing page of one “DDoS-for-hire” site to announce that it had been suspended and users may anticipate hearing from law enforcement, which led to the discovery of the DDoS-for-hire honeypots.

The National Crime Agency collaborated under Operation PowerOFF to target users of criminal DDoS services.

DDoS attacks are illegal in the majority of countries.

The National Crime Agency has collected substantial data from those who have accessed our domain. We will share this data with International Law Enforcement for action. Individuals in the UK who engaged with this site will be contacted by Law Enforcement.

The National Crime Agency has been and will run more services like this site.

Operation PowerOFF has already resulted in the arrest of numerous individuals and continues to ensure that users are being held accountable for their criminal activity.

What I like about the NCA’s action is that it sows the seeds of uncertainty amongst those considering using a DDoS-for-hire service.

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Put simply, you don’t know anymore whether the booter service you are signing up for can be trusted to keep your details out of the hands of the police, or whether in fact your information is going straight into the hands of investigators.

We Are Running Fake DDoS-for-hire Sites To Collect Details On Cybercriminals – UK Police

“Traditional site takedowns and arrests are key components of law enforcement’s response to this threat. However, we have extended our operational capability with this activity, at the same time as undermining trust in the criminal market,” explained Alan Merrett from the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit. “We will not reveal how many sites we have, or for how long they have been running. Going forward, people who wish to use these services can’t be sure who is actually behind them, so why take the risk?”

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Shutting down websites that make it simple for anybody to conduct a DDoS attack is nothing new for law enforcement agencies throughout the world.

For instance, five years ago, police arrested the administrator of webstresser[.]org, a DDoS marketplace, seizing control of its servers and database of over 136,000 users.

Many of Webstresser’s suspected customers faced arrest and criminal charges as a result.

As the NCA has previously observed, those using DDoS-for-hire sites are often teenagers, noting that the number of attacks launched against school systems more than doubled from 2019 to 2020.

We Are Running Fake DDoS-for-hire Sites To Collect Details On Cybercriminals – UK Police

According to the NCA, the average age of those using a DDoS booter service is just 15 years of age, with the youngest recorded being only nine years old.

This is the reason why the NCA set up the Cyber Choices campaign, buying ads on search engines, and raising awareness amongst young people of the consequences of committing a cybercrime.

Let’s hope the message is getting out there that the police are putting resources into investigating the customers of DDoS-for-hire services, and are prepared to bring them to justice.