On 24 April 2018, the world’s biggest marketplace by which to hire Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) services, webstresser.org, was shut down and its infrastructure seized. This was the result of a joint operation between the Dutch Police and the UK’s National Crime Agency with the support of Europol and several law enforcement agencies from around the world. Webstresser.org had over 136,000 registered users and launched 4 million orchestrated attacks targeting online services offered by banks, government institutions, and police forces.

In a DDoS attack, the attacker remotely controls connected devices to direct a large amount of traffic at a website or an online platform. The result is that the victim website is either slowed down past the point of usability or knocked completely offline, depriving users of essential online services. By paying a nominal fee, registered users at webstresser.org could rent the use of stressers and booters.