‘Operation Tarpit’ Targets Customers of Online Attack-for-Hire Services
Summary: Federal investigators in the U.S. and Europe arrested nearly three-dozen people across 13 countries suspected of paying for booter services that launch DDoS attacks, and conducted more than 100 "knock-and-talk" interviews with buyers who were not formally charged. The operation, dubbed "Operation Tarpit," drew partly on the infiltration of the booter service Netspoof, whose founder Grant Manser had 12,800 registered users and whose customers launched 603,499 DDoS attacks on 224,548 targets.
Why it matters: Europol said investigators are warning one-time users but aggressively pursuing repeat offenders, and the penalties can be severe enough to affect a young person's future prospects. The Netspoof founder received two years of youth detention suspended for 18 months plus 100 hours of community service, a sentence the judge softened because his tools blocked attacks on police, hospitals and government institutions.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
- Topics
- Cybercrime & Law Enforcement
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