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Cambridge study examines global law enforcement efforts against DDoS-for-hire services

Researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Security Group recently published important findings on the effectiveness of global law enforcement actions against DDoS-for-hire services, also known as booters. Their study, Assessing the Aftermath: the Effects of a Global Takedown against DDoS-for-hire Services, was presented at the USENIX Security Symposium 2025 and awarded an Honourable Mention. The work was carried out by Anh V. Vu, Ben Collier, Daniel R. Thomas, John Kristoff, Richard Clayton, and Alice Hutchings.

Booters have long offered an easy way for anyone with a few dollars to launch denial-of-service attacks. Marketed as “stress-testing” tools, they are widely used for malicious purposes and pose a persistent challenge to defenders.

The paper analyses the coordinated law enforcement takedowns in December 2022 and May 2023, which together seized around 60 domains. The research team drew on a wide range of data sources—traffic analytics, DDoS attack datasets, splash page logs, and online forums—to understand both the technical and social impact of the interventions.

Key findings include:

The research underlines that while takedowns do not eliminate booters, they serve as valuable disruptions. By making the market unstable, forcing operators to waste resources, and discouraging casual users, these interventions reduce overall harm—even if only temporarily.

As the authors note, the fight against DDoS-for-hire is not about a single decisive victory. Instead, it is a long-term effort to keep the ecosystem fragile and unappealing, gradually pushing it away from being a casual tool into a riskier niche.

This is an excellent example of rigorous, data-driven research that sheds light on both the technical and human aspects of cybercrime. We congratulate the University of Cambridge Security Group and the authors for their contribution to the field and for helping the community better understand how to tackle the persistent challenge of DDoS-for-hire services.


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