Six teenagers aged between 15 and 18 arrested for renting Lizard Squad’s Lizard Stresser DDoS tool
The police have arrested six teenagers, aged between 15 and 18 years on suspicion of launching Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks renting the tool created by infamous band of hackers, Lizard Squad.
Lizard Squad who had earned infamy for bringing down the Xbox and PlayStation servers during the Christmas weekend. They had gone on to create a rent-a-ddos service called Lizard Stresser which could be hired anonymously to launch DDoS attacks against targets.
The male suspects, who are aged between 15 and 18 included a 18 year old teenager from West Yorkshire, were arrested by police for allegedly renting out the Lizard Stresser and DDoSing website.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) which is the nodal agency investigating into the Xbox and PlayStation DDoS attacks said that the teenagers are suspected of renting the Lizard Stresser using bitcoins in an attempt to remain anonymous.
The teenagers had allegedly targeted various websites including a UK national newspaper, a school, gaming companies and a number of online retailers. NCA has not named the websites which were DDoSed by the teenagers or whether the DDoS attacks were successful.
Tony Adams, senior Operations Manager at the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit, said: “By paying a comparatively small fee, tools like Lizard Stresser can cripple businesses financially and deprive people of access to important information and public services.
“This multi-agency operation illustrates the commitment of the NCA and its partners to pursuing people who think they can criminally disrupt important public services or legitimate businesses.”
The arrests were made as part of a larger operation codenamed ‘Vivarium’ co-ordinated by the NCA and involving officers from several police forces.
NCA spokesperson said that they had executed a number of warrants this week and arrested an 18-year-old from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire; an 18-year-old from Manchester; a 16-year-old from Northampton; and a 15-year-old from Stockport.
Two other suspects, both 17, were arrested earlier this year. One is from Cardiff while the other is from Northolt, north-west London.
As of now all the six have received bails. NCA had further interviewed two 18-year-olds – one from Manchester and one from Milton Keynes, who were let off after questioning.
NSA said that they were also visiting 50 addresses linked to individuals who are registered on the Lizard Stresser website for questioning. The NCA said they will be warned DDoS attacks are illegal, can cause financial damage and lead to “severe restrictions on their freedom”.
Adams added, “One of our key priorities is to engage with those on the fringes of cyber criminality, to help them understand the consequences of cyber crime and how they can channel their abilities into productive and lucrative legitimate careers.”
