FBI Takes Down the NightmareStresser DDoS Platform

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has seized the domains of NightmareStresser — one of the world's oldest platforms offering DDoS attacks for hire. The announcement came from the FBI's cyber division.

Such “booter services” let anyone willing to pay rent out sprawling botnets of compromised routers and assorted Internet of Things devices in order to unleash a powerful flood of traffic against a chosen online platform or service. Before its domains nightmare-stresser[.]com and nightmarestresser[.]org were seized, the site immodestly billed itself as the “#1 IP booter” and “the only DDoS tool available 24/7.”

The scale of the service

According to Searchlight Cyber, as far back as 2023 NightmareStresser had more than 566,000 registered users and 52 dedicated servers. Its infrastructure could carry out attacks of up to 200 Gbps, striking different layers of the network — from Layer 7 application protocols down to TCP/UDP at Layer 4.

The FBI notes that since 2022 the service has been used to launch hundreds of thousands of actual or attempted DDoS attacks against victims around the world.

Part of a global campaign

The seizure was carried out as part of Operation PowerOFF — a long-running joint effort by international law enforcement agencies aimed at dismantling DDoS-for-hire infrastructure. The campaign began back in December 2018 with the seizure of 15 sites linked to such services.

Interestingly, the domain nightmarestresser[.]com had already been hit once before: in December 2022 the U.S. Department of Justice seized it and arrested six suspects credited with owning several DDoS-for-hire services at once. The site evidently managed to rise from the ashes — though now, it seems, for good.

Over the course of its existence, PowerOFF has led to the shutdown of the British service DigitalStress, the seizure of the booter-review site Dstat.cc, and the arrest of two operators in Poland. In separate waves, law enforcement has seized dozens of domains hosting such platforms. Last year, Polish authorities detained four suspects linked to six DDoS services that, since 2022, had attacked schools, government agencies, businesses, and gaming platforms worldwide; at the same time, the United States seized another nine domains.

The seized sites now sport a seizure banner, a reminder that even a service “available 24/7” can one day go offline for good.

Source: Bleeping Computer