KrebsOnSecurity reports massive DDoS attack following arrests of vDOS masterminds

By Yen Palec / Sep 12, 2016 09:47 PM EDT
(Photo : Getty Images//Patrick Lux ) Participants work at their their laptops at the annual Chaos Computer Club (CCC) computer hackers' congress, called 29C3, on December 28, 2012 in Hamburg, Germany.

Following the arrest of two Israeli hackers who are connected with the service vDOS, KrebsOnSecurity reported that its website received "heavy and sustainable" attacks. KrebsOnSecurity was one of the first outlets to publish a report regarding the hacking business of vDOS.

In a statement posted on KrebsOnSecurity website, the company said, "For most of Friday, KrebsOnSecurity came under a heavy and sustained denial-of-service attack, which spiked at almost 140 Gbps. A single message was buries in each attack packet: 'godiefaggot'."

Yarden Bidani and Italy Huri, both 18 years old, were arrested by Israeli authorities on Sept. 8. The two were connected to an ongoing FBI investigation regarding the DDoS-for-hire service called vDOS. The two were able to post bail and were released after questioning and are under house arrest for 10 days. Israeli authorities also banned the two from using the internet or any electronic communications for 30 days.

The two suspects were identified following a hack that spilled about the vDOS' hacking businesses including the list of its customers of and their targets. Following the hack, a copy of vDOS' database was obtained by KrebsOnSecurity which it posted online.

KrebsOnSecurity played a significant role in exposing the hacking business of vDOS. Experts on the issue said that this might be one of the many reasons why the website was attacked. KrebsOnSecurity revealed on its report that between April and July of this year, vDOS launched various DDoS attacks amounting to more than 277 million seconds of attack time.

According to International Business Times, vDOS has been in business since 2012. During its run, the hacking firm was able to launch more than 150,000 DDoS attacks on various targets around the globe. Despite their notoriety, some security experts noticed the lack of Operational Security (OpSec) on some of the firm's operations.

On one of its report, KrebsOnSecurity noted that both Huri and Bidani were sharing some of their hacking activities. Moreover, the two hackers were also lax in covering their tracks which ultimately led to their arrests.