Teen Hackers Arrested for Taking Down Sites

A pair of teen hackers from Israel have been arrested for operating a hacking tool designed to crash victims’ websites by flooding them with overwhelming and malicious traffic.
The two 18 years old from Israel are suspected of running a service called “vDOS” that attacks websites and services. Those programs named “booters” allow people even without any technical skills to engage in DDoS attacks, which can be used in anything from malicious attempts to take down online gaming platforms to politically motivated hacktivist attacks and can even be utilized as a threat in blackmail attempts.
Over the last two years, the two hackers reportedly earned over 600,000$, being responsible for a majority of the attacks clogging up the Internet over the past few years. The hackers targeted only foreign websites, refusing to attack any Israeli websites.
The hackers operated undetected for years until Brian Krebs, security researcher working with an unnamed source was able to find an exploit in the service allowing him to access the database of information. He discovered that the servers were rented in Bulgaria and helped the hackers to operate from Israel. The servers had a database of thousands of hacked customers.

Krebs declared that the owners of the vDOS systems are currently living in Israel, and the service was built in such a manner that it didn’t target any websites that originated from the country. This measure was probably taken in order to avoid attracting the attention of the country’s authorities.

After revealing this story, the Israeli security services arrested the teens, placing them under house arrest.
After the incident was revealed, the information showed that the service made at least 618,000$ for the two teens during the last two years, but the final sum is very likely to be higher:

Krebs also mentioned that the illegal service brought earnings of approximately $1 million to its proprietors.

While the two hackers were released on $10,000 bail, Israeli authorities have seized their passports and placed them under house arrest. They also received a prohibition on using any Internet or telecommunications equipment for the next 30 days. As of September 9^th, vDOS services were also taken offline.

What do you think about hacking? Do you feel threatened by the recent events?

Image source Youtube