DOJ takes down NightmareStresser DDoS platform

The NightmareStresser platform used to disrupt hundreds of educational institutions, government agencies and other organizations was seized on Tuesday by the Justice Department. 

The DOJ announced the court-authorized takedown alongside Canadian officials, but declined to say if any arrests were conducted as part of the operation.

NightmareStresser was a well known site used to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, and court documents said it was used in hundreds of DDoS attacks since 2022, targeting “educational institutions, government agencies, gaming platforms and millions of people.”

The site claimed to be “backed by the most experienced minds in the DDoS industry” and called itself the “longest-running, most powerful, and most respected platform of its kind.”

The DOJ previously seized another domain connected to NightmareStresser in 2022. Cybersecurity experts said the site had more than 550,000 users and offered DDoS attacks for prices ranging from €25 to €19,999 (about $28.7 to $22,900). 

Law enforcement agencies around the world have worked for nearly a decade to disrupt the DDoS-for-hire industry — arresting administrators and seizing databases in dozens of countries as part of Operation PowerOFF. Powerful DDoS tools flood targeted servers with unwanted traffic and are used by an array of online actors including gamers and nation-states. 

Last month, several Norwegian government services were disrupted for more than a day after a large-scale DDoS attack targeted the infrastructure used to operate them.

In April, the DOJ seized eight sites, including “Vac Stresser” and “Mythical Stress.” More than 20 countries participated in the coordinated takedown and Europol said four people were arrested after 25 search warrants were executed. More than 50 domains were seized and European authorities said they identified about 75,000 users of the DDoS-for-hire sites.

That action came one month after law enforcement agencies in the U.S., Germany and Canada coordinated a disruption operation designed to seize infrastructure used by the Aisuru, KimWolf, JackSkid and Mossad botnets — which were built to target victims with distributed DDoS attacks that overloaded websites and made them unreachable. 

The Justice Department said it has charged 12 people for facilitating DDoS-for-hire services over the last eight years and seized more than 100 domains tied to the platforms.

Last year, Polish police arrested four people allegedly operating six different DDoS-for-hire sites, offering their services for as little as €10.