A service administrator who destabilized the educational network has been brought to court.
In Los Angeles, charges were brought against a local resident who managed a service for conducting DDoS attacks on an order that offered its services to mercenaries.
Scott Esparza, known online under the pseudonym "Hazard", was one of the site's administrators Astrostress.com. The service came under investigation and was seized by the FBI in December 2022 as part of a large-scale operation against similar booter services.
According to the prosecution, Astrostress.com it allowed users to initiate streams of unwanted Internet traffic to target computers for a fixed fee, causing them to crash or completely stop working on the network (DDoS-for-hire). Information about the charges was first published on the Court Watch website. It is noted that using Astrostress tools, an attack was carried out on the network of public schools in Baltimore County in February 2022, as a result of which the school district had problems connecting to the Internet.
Esparze is accused of knowingly causing damage to more than 10 protected computers. As part of his activities, Esparze was engaged in technical support and development of the site Astrostress.com, processed requests for attacks and subscriptions, and actively promoted its resource in order to attract new customers and distract them from competing sites. As part of this investigation, 19-year-old Shamar Shattuck, also associated with the activities of Astrostress, was also arrested in March 2023, and later admitted his guilt for participating in the platform's work.
Despite the efforts of international law enforcement agencies to combat cybercrime, the market for DDoS services on the darknet and on shadow forums continues to expand. According to analysts, the availability of stressors and boosters, tools that allow even inexperienced criminals to launch large-scale campaigns, has increased.
The UK went even further – the National Crime Agency of the UK (NCA) created several fake DDoS-for-hire sites to identify cybercriminals who use these services to attack organizations. Criminals gain access to fake sites that look like a real DDoS-for-hire service, but instead of providing access to DDoS tools, the sites simply collected information about visitors.
In Los Angeles, charges were brought against a local resident who managed a service for conducting DDoS attacks on an order that offered its services to mercenaries.
Scott Esparza, known online under the pseudonym "Hazard", was one of the site's administrators Astrostress.com. The service came under investigation and was seized by the FBI in December 2022 as part of a large-scale operation against similar booter services.
According to the prosecution, Astrostress.com it allowed users to initiate streams of unwanted Internet traffic to target computers for a fixed fee, causing them to crash or completely stop working on the network (DDoS-for-hire). Information about the charges was first published on the Court Watch website. It is noted that using Astrostress tools, an attack was carried out on the network of public schools in Baltimore County in February 2022, as a result of which the school district had problems connecting to the Internet.
Esparze is accused of knowingly causing damage to more than 10 protected computers. As part of his activities, Esparze was engaged in technical support and development of the site Astrostress.com, processed requests for attacks and subscriptions, and actively promoted its resource in order to attract new customers and distract them from competing sites. As part of this investigation, 19-year-old Shamar Shattuck, also associated with the activities of Astrostress, was also arrested in March 2023, and later admitted his guilt for participating in the platform's work.
Despite the efforts of international law enforcement agencies to combat cybercrime, the market for DDoS services on the darknet and on shadow forums continues to expand. According to analysts, the availability of stressors and boosters, tools that allow even inexperienced criminals to launch large-scale campaigns, has increased.
The UK went even further – the National Crime Agency of the UK (NCA) created several fake DDoS-for-hire sites to identify cybercriminals who use these services to attack organizations. Criminals gain access to fake sites that look like a real DDoS-for-hire service, but instead of providing access to DDoS tools, the sites simply collected information about visitors.
