Live data from Hacker News

German police raid DDoS-friendly host FlyHosting

krebsonsecurity.com

41–48 of 48 posts

Re: German police raid DDoS-friendly host FlyHosting

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PayPal has a banking license it does a pretty full KYC in most places or relies on others that do. Outside of cash transfer services which often also require an ID on both ends albeit that is often easier to fake there aren’t ways to transfer money anonymously. So companies use either alternative settlement methods such as crypto or gift cards or what is also quite common twin settlement. You want a VPC? We’ll give y…

Before hordes of people respond with "PayPal is not a bank!", it is indeed not a bank in US, but its European subsidiary is legally a bank.

In the US it doesn’t have a license anymore mainly to avoid FDIC requirements but it is licensed in every state https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/licenses

Re: German police raid DDoS-friendly host FlyHosting

#42
post #2

> FlyHosting, a dark web offering And then: > An ad for FlyHosting posted by the the user “bnt” on the now-defunct cybercrime forum BreachForums So we have a dark web 'offering' advertising on a clearnet forum. This is a conflict of interests IMHO. You're either fully operating on the darkweb or you're not. Clearnet e-crime sites are famously de-anonymized. It just takes a payment from PayPal registered in your legal…

In that case you really weren't trying to be anonymous

Re: German police raid DDoS-friendly host FlyHosting

#43

I wonder what sort of person is aware enough of DDoS attacks to want to buy one, savvy enough to find where to buy one, yet dumb enough to pay with PayPal. Or accept PayPal if you ran such a service. Given, it says the people running it were 16-24 and adolescent hubris knows no bounds... Maybe the customers were the same general age as the owners?

In fairness paying for a Ddos attack sounds like a dumb thing with little upside

Re: German police raid DDoS-friendly host FlyHosting

#44
post #2

> FlyHosting, a dark web offering And then: > An ad for FlyHosting posted by the the user “bnt” on the now-defunct cybercrime forum BreachForums So we have a dark web 'offering' advertising on a clearnet forum. This is a conflict of interests IMHO. You're either fully operating on the darkweb or you're not. Clearnet e-crime sites are famously de-anonymized. It just takes a payment from PayPal registered in your legal…

They weren't "darkweb" at all, they were clearnet, they were basically just like any other hosting provider, they had normal non-criminal customers, and criminal ones too.

Re: German police raid DDoS-friendly host FlyHosting

#45

I wonder what sort of person is aware enough of DDoS attacks to want to buy one, savvy enough to find where to buy one, yet dumb enough to pay with PayPal. Or accept PayPal if you ran such a service. Given, it says the people running it were 16-24 and adolescent hubris knows no bounds... Maybe the customers were the same general age as the owners?

We've had high schoolers DDoS their schools to avoid standardized testing. It is also a common way to interfere with esports. So yeah, the customers are often quite young.

Re: German police raid DDoS-friendly host FlyHosting

#46

I wonder what sort of person is aware enough of DDoS attacks to want to buy one, savvy enough to find where to buy one, yet dumb enough to pay with PayPal. Or accept PayPal if you ran such a service. Given, it says the people running it were 16-24 and adolescent hubris knows no bounds... Maybe the customers were the same general age as the owners?

When I was a kid you could buy these monthly warez CDs full of games and professional software. The gang producing them got so overwhelmed with burning CDs in their basement, that they went to a factory in Germany. Police looked at the serial number on the CD, went to the factory and asked who the customer was and that's how they got busted.

When I was a kid, I distributed warcraft 3 beta cracks from our ISP webspace (20 MB, unlimited traffic, fast speeds made my mirror one of the most favored), Blizzard didn't even need the police and just made our ISP call my dad at work to stop it ;)
Post reply on HN