So what are these “Stressers” and “Booters”? With enough computers, mobile phones and other Internet-connected devices “enslaved”, a new botnet is born-ready to do the dirty work of anyone willing to pay. herders) can start distributing malware, infecting devices through a use of spam email, vulnerability scanners, brute force attacks and more. Using these, aspiring bot masters (a.k.a. Typically, such kits contain the bot payload and the CnC (command and control) files.

Sadly, building such a botnet is simpler than you may think, considering the elaborate damage that can be caused a cluster of such “zombie” computers.įor instance, a quick Internet search by any would-be botnet creator will pull up several popular botnet builder kits, often complete with a set of tips and instructions. In a nutshell, what these DDoS services are usually selling is access to DDoS botnets: networks of malware-infected computers, which are in turn being “subleased” to subscribers. To understand the business of DDoS-for-hire let’s take a look at what exactly the “product” is. Troels Oerting, head of EU cybercrime center DDoS for hire: Subleasing infected computers “With the increasing number of people on the internet we will see much, much more crime and it will be facilitated by cybercrime-as-a-service producers.” stressers or booters), the barriers to entry for a DDoS attacker has been significantly lowered, offering users the option to anonymously attack any target, for just a few dozen dollars. In recent years, with the emergence of DDoS-for-hire services (a.k.a. Historically, DDoS attacks are associated with hacker and hacktivist groups and often considered to be a work of professional cyber crooks. DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service, a malicious attempt to make a server or a network resource unavailable to legitimate users, by overloading it with massive amounts of fake traffic.

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