A guy from Illinois was sentenced to two years in jail for running a distributed denial of service (DDoS) network that enabled threat actors to carry out over 200,000 assaults.
Matthew Gatrel, 33, was convicted for creating and operating the websites “downthem.org” and “ampnode.com.” The former offered DDoS attack subscriptions, while the latter offered a bulletproof hosting service that also assisted users in conducting their own DDoS assaults.
With international support from the United Kingdom National Crime Agency and the Dutch Police, the FBI spearheaded the law enforcement operation.
A DDoS assault occurs when malicious actors send large amounts of traffic to an internet server or website, quickly exhausting the device’s capabilities and rendering it unreachable to genuine requests. As a result, they have the potential to inflict significant financial losses owing to company disruption.
They usually necessitate a swarm of devices to produce large amounts of trash traffic and bombard the target server with many fake requests.
Gatrel’s services provided threat actors with short-term access to harmful equipment, allowing them to carry out devastating operations by renting and choosing which DDoS assaults to launch.
Gatrel supported threat actors who carried out assaults, according to the Department of Justice, by providing instruction and demonstrations of his service.
According to a news statement by the Department of Justice, “Gatrel gave professional assistance to clients of both businesses, including information on the best attack strategies to “down” particular types of computers, specific hosting providers, or to evade DDoS protection systems.”
“Gatrel utilized the DownThem service to show the strength and efficiency of products to prospective clients by targeting the customer’s targeted victim and giving proof, via screenshot, that he had cut the victim’s internet connection.”
A Two-year sentence
DownThem.org carried out hundreds of thousands of individual DDoS assaults between October 2014, when Gatrel established up the criminal sites, and August 2021, when he was arrested.
According to the DOJ release, “records from the DownThem service indicated over 2,000 registered users and over 200,000 initiated assaults, including attacks on residences, schools, colleges, municipal and local government websites, and financial organizations worldwide.”
Gatrel was found guilty of the following three offenses, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison:
one count of conspiring to tamper with a protected computer without permission
one count of conspiring to defraud the government by wire fraud
unlawful impairment of a protected computer (one count)
Juan Martinez, a co-defendant, was sentenced to five years of probation after pleading guilty to one count of illegal impairment of a protected computer in the summer of 2021.
He began as one of Gatrel’s clients before being appointed to DownThem.org administrator in 2018.
