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FBI Shuts Down 15 DDoS-For-Hire Sites (techcrunch.com)
The FBI has shut down the domains of 15 high-profile distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) websites. "Several seizure warrants granted by a California federal judge went into effect Thursday, removing several of these 'border' or 'stresser' sites off the internet 'as part of coordinated law enforcement action taken against illegal DDoS-for-hire services,'" reports TechCrunch. "The orders were granted under federal seizure laws, and the domains were replaced with a federal notice." From the report: Prosecutors have charged three men, Matthew Gatrel and Juan Martinez in California and David Bukoski in Alaska, with operating the sites, according to affidavits filed in three U.S. federal courts, which were unsealed Thursday. The FBI had assistance from the U.K.'s National Crime Agency and the Dutch national police, and the Justice Department named several companies, including Cloudflare, Flashpoint and Google, for providing authorities with additional assistance. In all, several sites were knocked offline -- including downthem.org, netstress.org, quantumstress.net, vbooter.org and defcon.pro and more -- which allowed would-be attackers to sign up to rent time and servers to launch large-scale bandwidth attacks against systems and servers.
I have also had direct dealings with the FBI's Computer Crime Lab. The team leader had a degree in history, and his subordinates were even more clueless than he was. The only way they could have done this is if the three named companies that provided them "addition assistance", handed them all the evidence on a silver platter. Even then, it is a miracle that they didn't screw it up.
The FBI prides themselves on their "special agents" being able to "do it all" without any actually being "special". But, at least with tech crimes, that clearly isn't working.