Illinois Man Gets 2 Years for Running DDoS Attack Subscription Service

Matthew Gatrel is set to spend 24 months in federal prison after helping to launch over 200,000 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks through his subscription and hosting services.

As the Department of Justice reports, 33-year-old Gatrel was found guilty of conspiracy to commit unauthorized impairment of a protected computer, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer by United States District Judge John A. Kronstadt.

Gatrel's business venture involved running two main websites. The first site, DownThem.org, offered a subscription service allowing customers to easily launch DDoS attacks. The second site, AmpNode.com, complemented the first by promising to offer "bulletproof" hosting and server spoofing using pre-configured DDoS attack scripts. Gatrel also doled out expert advice to customers alongside different subscription plans with the cost rising to match the attack capability offered.

In total, over 2,000 subscribers carried out more than 200,000 DDoS attacks on homes, schools, universities, municipal and local government websites, and financial institutions. Prosecutors view what Gatrel had created as a "criminal enterprise" that not only launched attacks, but "provided infrastructure and resources for other cybercriminals to run their own businesses launching these same kinds of attacks."

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When he was originally charged back in 2018, the Justice Department also seized 15 domains that were being used as part of Gatrel's attack service. As well as DownThem.org, he was also using critical-boot.com, ragebooter.com, and quantumstress.net.