A new report proves the value of following the money in the fight against dodgy cybercrime services known as “booters” or “stressers” — virtual hired muscle that can be rented to knock nearly any website offline. … The researchers posed as buyers of nearly two dozen booter services — including vDOS — in a bid to discover the PayPal accounts that booter services were using to accept payments. In response to their investigations, PayPal began seizing booter service PayPal accounts and balances, effectively launching their own preemptive denial-of-service attacks against the payment infrastructure for these services.
[Research is by the Center for Cybersecurity’s, Professor Damon McCoy, and his graduate students Ryan Brunt and Prakhar Pandey]