Operation PowerOFF also led to the arrests of four alleged admins.
DDoS-for-hire services have been dismantled as part of the international Europol-coordinated takedown campaign Operation PowerOFF.
The services, including Cfxapi, Cfxsecurity, jetstress, neostress, quickdown, and zapcut enabled massive distributed denial-of-service intrusions since 2022.
Operation PowerOFF also led to the arrests of four alleged admins of the DDoS-for-hire services, also known as stressers or booters, by Poland's Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime (CBZC). It was able to sequester devices and financial records after discovering an association between the suspects and a global cyber-criminal network.
Such action coincided with the U.S. Justice Department's seizure of nine DDoS-for-hire service domains, most of which impersonated network testing tools. Additional arrests and domain takeovers are poised to be conducted as the global crackdown activity continues.
"This is a strong signal that cybercrime doesn't pay. We're not just taking down platforms — we're dismantling the false sense of impunity behind them," said CBZC.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
