2 Scots held in swoop on international cyber gang
TWO men in Scotland have been arrested in a global blitz against a website blamed for millions of cyber attacks.
Six suspected members of a crime gang behind the webstresser.org site were rounded up as police swooped in five countries.
The Scots-based suspects, aged 21 and 28 and both from the Lanarkshire area, were arrested on Tuesday and charged with computer misuse offences.
The website was involved in targeting some of the UK’s biggest banks.
Dutch police, with the help of authorities in Germany and the US, seized computer servers and took down the site at 11.30am yesterday in the wake of the arrests.
Cyber criminals used webstresser.org – which could be rented for £10.75 – to launch more than four million so-called distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. The crime BY ALAN McEWEN involves high volumes of internet traffic being directed at computers to disable them.
Individuals with little or no technical knowledge could rent the webstresser service to launch crippling DDOS assaults worldwide.
Along with the Scottish arrests, suspects were snared in Holland, Serbia, Croatia and Canada after an investigation led by the UK’s National Crime Agency and Dutch police.
The NCA said the malicious website was used to attack seven of the UK’s biggest banks last November. The banks were forced to reduce operations or CANADA shut down entire systems, incurring hundreds of thousands of pounds in costs to get back up and running.
A police spokeswoman said: “As part of an international operation involving law enforcement agencies across Europe, officers from Police Scotland Cybercrime Unit have arrested two males from the Lanarkshire area in connection with Computer Misuse Act offences. Investigations are ongoing.”
As part of the operation, an address in Bradford was also searched and items seized.
Officers from the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) had identified criminal LANARKSHIRE infrastructure in Holland as part of a campaign against “DDOS-for-hire” services. The agency worked with Dutch police to identify the crime group allegedly behind the enterprise.
Jo Goodall, senior investigating officer at the NCA, said: “A significant criminal website has been shut down and the sophisticated crime group behind it stopped as a result of an international investigation involving law enforcement agencies from 11 countries.
“The arrests made over the past two days show that the internet does not provide HOLLANDCROATIA SERBIA bullet-proof anonymity to offenders. We expect to identify further suspects linked to the site in the coming weeks and months as we examine the evidence we have gathered.
“Cyber offenders can act against UK targets from anywhere in the world. This means UK-based offenders can also attack targets in any country.”
Gert Ras, head of the National High Tech Crime Unit at the Dutch National Police, said: “By taking down the world’s largest illegal DDOS seller, we have made an unprecedented impact on DDOS cyber crime.”
Dan Crisp, from trade association UK Finance, said: “Cyber crime is costing UK firms billions and has the potential to seriously disrupt our economy.
“The industry is hugely supportive of multilateral law enforcement programmes, which can effectively disrupt both cyber-criminal activity and illegal operations, and help protect customers from attacks.”