- US law enforcement seized Nightmare Stresser domains, a long‑running DDoS‑for‑hire platform
- Service enabled hundreds of thousands of attacks since 2022; FBI banner now replaces sites
- Part of Operation PowerOFF, which has seized 100+ domains and charged 12 people so far
US law enforcement agencies disrupted yet another Distributed Denial of Service for hire (DDoS-for-hire) platform. In a press release published earlier this week on the District of Alaska’s Attorney General’s Office website, it was said that two internet domains associated with the Nightmare Stresser service were seized.
Describing it as “one of the world’s longest running Distributed Denial of Service for hire services,” the DoJ says Nightmare Stresser was used in “hundreds of thousands of actual or attempted DDoS attacks targeting victims worldwide since 2022”.
Services such as this one are called “booters” or “stressers”, and are often advertised as legitimate, allowing users to stress-test their websites against possible DDoS attacks.
No arrests
However, researchers have warned on multiple occasions that this is merely a cover for what’s essentially illegal activity. These platforms rent their services to anyone, including cybercriminals, and have been used to disrupt and take businesses, public organizations, and individuals offline, causing reputational and financial harm.
Nightmare Stresser’s two domains were seized – nightmare-stresser[.]com and nightmarestresser[.]org. Visiting these sites now shows the usual FBI defacement banner saying, “This website has been seized as part of a coordinated law enforcement action taken against illegal DDoS-for-hire services.”
To run DDoS attacks, threat actors need infrastructure – hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices infected with malware that forces them to direct their traffic towards a single point. The DoJ’s announcement says nothing about the infrastructure being dismantled, or the malware used to create Nightmare Stresser being discovered or sinkholed. It also does not mention any arrests being made, so it is safe to assume Nightmare Stresser will be back to its usual shenanigans sooner, rather than later.
Still, the press release says that the takedown is part of Operation PowerOFF, an ongoing campaign aimed at dismantling DDoS-for-hire infrastructure worldwide, as well as “holding accountable the administrators and users of these illegal services.”
So far, more than 100 domains were seized as part of the effort, and 12 people were charged.
