FBI Dismantles 27 'Stresser' Sites in Largest DDoS-for-Hire Takedown
Operation PowerOff III seized 27 booter-service domains and indicted nine operators across four countries, the FBI's largest DDoS-for-hire crackdown to date.
Federal authorities announced the seizure of 27 "booter" or "stresser" websites — services that rent distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack capacity to paying customers — in an international operation dubbed PowerOff III.
The takedown, coordinated by the FBI, Europol, the Dutch National Police, and the UK National Crime Agency, named nine individuals in indictments unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia. The defendants, located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands, face charges including conspiracy to commit computer fraud.
"These services lowered the technical bar for launching massive disruption against schools, gaming platforms, and small businesses," said Acting U.S. Attorney Linda Park during a press conference. "We allege the operators collectively earned over $4 million from subscriptions and crypto payments since 2023."
The seized domains had been used to launch tens of millions of DDoS attacks against targets including Minecraft servers, Discord communities, ISPs, and at least 14 school districts in the United States. Visitors to the seized domains now see a banner indicating law enforcement action and a warning to former customers.
The FBI's Cyber Division has previously stated that prior PowerOff operations in 2022 and 2018 measurably reduced the average daily volume of DDoS attacks observed by Akamai and Cloudflare in the weeks following.