Meet DDoSaaS: Distributed Denial of Service-as-a-Service

It’s not often an entirely new and thriving sector of the “digital economy” – one hitherto unmentioned by the popular press – floats to the surface of the lake in broad daylight, waving a tentacle at us. This is the DDoS-for-hire industry, and it’s fascinating for a few reasons. This shady marketplace has done everything a …

[0laf]

Just proves that it's an effective business

When I tell manager about the commoditisation of these 'dark' services it's probably the thing that scares them the most. The still imagine a world of Hollywood hacker lone wolves working in dingy bedrooms.

The have little concept that this is such big business that these guys probably run out of nice offices and offer service desks and SLAs to their customers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just proves that it's an effective business

"Hackers working in dark bedrooms", how do you know what the CloudFlare CEOs bedroom is like?

(In reference to the oh so convenient, but obviously "coincidental" point that CloudFlare benefits massively by not policing it's own network for DDoS hosting, while offering to protect against DDoS...)

[chivo243]

DDoSaaS

Hey! that was my joke at work today... Chalk it up to great minds and all that

[ma1010]

Good mornin', Squire!

Be a real shame if anything bad was to happen 'ere! But for just a few quid a month...

Really, something should be done about these types of companies. It's one thing if once in a while some criminal uses your service, and you take steps to stop them once you know about it (think most mail services which don't allow spammers).

But here we seem to have a company that regularly allows criminals to use their network and then sells services to mitigate the attacks they allow?? Maybe I'm missing something here, but it sounds like racketeering to me. Perhaps Cloudflare's management should be getting some porridge time.

[quxinot]

Meh, they're not real business until they've outsourced their helpdesk to people that are unable to communicate in their customers' native language.

[lglethal]

What you mean Glaswegians?

[Haku]

I got this email 8 days ago:

Subject: "EXS" WARNING!!! Attack!!! "EXS"

.

We are a HACKER TEAM - Armada Collective

1 - We have checked your information security systems, setup is poor; the systems are very vulnerable and obsolete.

2 - We'll begin attack on Tuesday 06-09-2016 8:00 p.m.!!!!!

3 - We'll execute some targeted attacks and check your DDoS servers by the 10-300 Gbps attack power

4 - We'll run a security breach test of your servers through the determined vulnerability, and we'll gain the access to your databases.

5 - All the computers on your network will be attacked for Cerber - Crypto-Ransomware

6 - You can stop the attack beginning, if payment 1 bitcoin to bitcoin ADDRESS: [snip]

7 - If you do not pay before the attack 1 bitcoin, the price will increase to 20 bitcoins

8 - You have time to decide! Transfer 1 bitcoin to ADDRESS: [snip]

The rest of it was telling me how to use bitcoin to send them money.

I don't know whose servers they hit last Tuesday because I don't own any :)

[energystar]

So Meta...

Such a classic! .mil, .gov, .com or just on the wild?

[energystar]

Seems ElReg

Has single word filters.

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

This is going to get worse with the proliferation of insecure IoT devices.

[Templogin]

Oh noooooo!

People will be toasting my bread when I'm not there!

[energystar]

Re: Oh noooooo!

Don't worry. Just a f_(*ing micro-mic next to you, dressing you, under you.

[Bernard]

If the retail arm offer DDoSaaS

doesn't it then follow that the wholesale arm are offering DDoSaaSaaS?

[Pascal Monett]

"buying DDoS protection offered by CloudFlare is almost mandatory"

Nope, no need. Just put down some money for a DDOS attack on Cloudflare. See how they like a spoonful of their own medicine.