Europol has announced a takedown of Distributed Denial Refusal (DDOS) (DDOS), which was used to launch thousands of cyberattacks around the world.
In connection with the business, Polish authorities arrested four individuals, and the US seized nine domains associated with the now decommissioned platform.
“The suspect is thought to be behind six separate stress/booter services that allow customers to flood their websites and servers with malicious traffic.
Services named CFXAPI, CFXSecurity, NeoStress, JetStress, Quickdown and Zapcut are said to have helped launch widespread attacks on schools, government services, businesses and gaming platforms between 2022 and 2025.
According to Europol, the platform provided a “Slick user interface,” allowing malicious actors with little or no technical expertise to orchestrate DDOS attacks, simply by entering their target IP address, selecting the type of attack, paying a fee.
Stress services advertised in underground forums are often disguised as legitimate stress testing tools, but are designed to disrupt access to web resources by unleashing fake traffic floods on target sites, making them inaccessible to real users.
“Unlike traditional botnets that require control over a large number of infected devices, stress/booter service industrialize attacks attacks through centralized, rental infrastructure,” Europol said.
Quickdown pricing plans as of July 15, 2024
According to snapshots captured in the Internet archive, CFXSecurity is hosted in CFXSecurity[.]BET and “CFXSecurity.cc” sold themselves as “#1 stress testing service” and “provided comprehensive stress testing and ensured that our website and services were ready to survive the storm.”
The service was offered at three plans: starters for $20 a month, premium/$50 a month, and enterprise for $130 a month. Quick Down (“Quick Down”[.]Pro”), similarly priced the kit between $20 and $379 a month.
In a report published in August 2024, cloud security company Radware revealed that Quickdown is one of the new stress services that employ a hybrid architecture that combines both botnets and dedicated servers. Quickdown is said to have introduced “new plans related to botnet add-ons and botnet networks” in September 2023.
The latest action, carried out in collaboration with Dutch and German authorities, is part of an ongoing effort called Operation Poweroff, which aims to dismantle the infrastructure that promotes DDOS-For Hire’s activities.
In December 2024, a set of 27 Stress Services went offline, with the release of accusations against six different individuals in the Netherlands and the United States.
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