Operation PowerOFF is an ongoing joint operation by the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

EUROPOL Europol, officially the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, is the law enforcement agency of the European Union (EU). Established in 1998, it is based in The Hague, Netherlands, and serves as the central hub for coordinating c ...

, the Dutch National Police Corps, German Federal Criminal Police Office , Poland Cybercrime Police and the UK

National Crime Agency The National Crime Agency (NCA) is a Law enforcement agency#natlea, national law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom. It is the UK's lead agency against organised crime; Human trafficking, human, Arms trafficking, weapon and Illegal drug t ...

to close "

booter/stresser Stresser (or booter) services provide denial-of-service attack as a service, usually as a criminal enterprise. They have simple front ends, and accept payment over the web. Marketed and promoted as stress-testing tools, they can be used to perfor ...

" services offering

DDoS In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyberattack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host co ...

attack services for hire. Beginning in 2018, the operation shut down 48 websites offering DDoS services, and six people were arrested in the United States. Multiple companies, including

Cloudflare Cloudflare, Inc., is an American company that provides content delivery network services, cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, wide area network services, reverse proxies, Domain Name Service, ICANN-accredited domain registration, and other se ...

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support E-commerce payment system, online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alter ...

, and

DigitalOcean DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational technology company and cloud service provider. The company is headquartered in New York City, New York, US, with 15 globally distributed data centers. DigitalOcean provides developers, ...

provided information to the FBI to assist in the seizure.

History

In 2018, the FBI closed down 15 DDoS websites with the Dutch National Police Corps. On December 14, 2022, resuming this collaboration, the FBI and Department of Justice announced that they had closed multiple websites offering DDoS-for-hire services. The FBI claimed that these websites offered services designed to slow down websites relating to gaming. The FBI also noted that these services had heavy use, claiming that "Quantum", one of the seized services, was used to launch 50,000 attacks. After the shutdown, multiple law enforcement agencies collaborating with the FBI declared they would place advertisements on search engines, such as Google, that would educate the public on the legality of DDoS services.

Aftermath

Six US citizens were indicted by FBI offices in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

and

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

. Three of the people arrested were from

Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...

, one from

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, one from

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

, and one from

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

. The FBI asks that users with information related to the attacks contact their offices for tips and information related to the seized sites.

Ongoing activity

, Operation PowerOFF activities were still ongoing, with further websites being seized and prosecutions continuing.

References

{{Reflist PowerOFF PowerOFF 2022 in computing Denial-of-service attacks Cybercrime