Police arrest man who allegedly extorted companies with DDOs attacks

The police have arrested a 24-year-old man from Veenendaal who is suspected of extorting companies with DDOs attacks. The man would have threatened at least nine small companies to use a denial-of-service unless they paid him.

The man sent messages to random companies. He approached them with a message in which he extorted them. The suspect demanded an undisclosed amount of bitcoins, otherwise he would launch a DDOs attack against the companies’ websites. In a few cases, he actually carried out a brief attack “to reinforce his message,” police said. In a number of cases, the companies’ websites have been offline for hours. The man approached small and medium-sized companies, ‘such as web shops and wholesalers’.

It is not clear how the police managed to track down the suspect. An investigation was launched following a report. The police say they are increasingly able to detect DDOs attackers through collaborations with data centers and hosting providers. The man was arrested at his home in Veenendaal. A firearm was also found there. Police also seized the man’s car.

Police and security experts have been warning for years about the ease with which DDOs attacks can be carried out. This is becoming increasingly simpler by, for example, buying web stressers, which are supposedly intended to view the capacity of networks. In 2018, the police took one of the largest web stresser services offline.