A man from Rijen is being prosecuted for carrying out hundreds of DDoS attacks. With such attacks, cyber criminals try to make a website inaccessible. The police tracked down the suspect in a large-scale international police action against DDoS attackers. Along with the man from Rijen, three more Dutch men are being prosecuted for the attacks. These are men between the ages of 22 and 26.
The three other men come from Voorhout, Lelystad and Barneveld. The four were interrogated last week. The man from Barneveld (26) is suspected of carrying out 4,169 DDoS attacks, the other three, including the man from Rijen, of hundreds of such attacks.
In such an attack, cyber criminals send many requests to a website, causing it to become overloaded and therefore inaccessible. In the Netherlands, a frequently used website on which the cyber attacks were for sale was taken offline during the police action.
200 suspects
In total, the police managed to determine the identity of two hundred suspects in this investigation. This week they are confronted ‘with the fact that they are in the police’s sights’, reports police cyber specialist Iris Koster.
“In the coming weeks, at least ten users can expect the police at their door for a warning conversation. Hundreds of identified Dutch users will also receive a letter or email from the police to warn them.”
The police expect to conduct more interrogations in the near future and have not ruled out arrests. The international cooperation of fifteen different countries together with Europol has been going on for years, but an operation was launched a year ago to make a ‘bigger impact’, a police spokesperson explains.
Cyber attacks
As a result of this action, a total of 27 popular international websites used for the cyber attacks were taken offline in recent weeks. Three people who maintain such websites were also arrested.
“The international operation PowerOFF is a strong signal to cyber criminals,” says Koster. “Criminals who make money by shutting down other people’s IT are simply punishable and they will notice that.”