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Comment by r3trohack3r | Hacker News Reader

The comments from the FBI are really confusing. They seem to use terms like “dark web” to make it sound like these were sophisticated cybercriminals and the FBI had to use sophisticated tools to catch them.

But looking at the FBIs sophisticated analysis… it looks like the went to a clear web domain name, put in their credit card number, asked them to do an illegal thing, they did the illegal thing, and then they charged the owners of the domain. From my outside view, it looks like the FBI allowed DDoS as a Service providers to operate in public for at least a decade. Talking this up like it was hard work isn’t landing like they think it is.

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It sounds like these are DDoS-as-a-service providers who try to appear to be legitimate businesses and cover themselves with terms of service. It's basically a legitimate looking site but they do a psst, hey we do DDoS.

To do that it sounds like they may advertise themselves on the dark web as an attack web site. They also don't bother to verify ownership of a target, like checking domain ownership for example is probably the most common use case here. They also use other people's mis-configured devices to amplify their attack. That last part is particularly salient I think.

It's very stupid to advertise yourself on the dark web for this if you host a site on the clear web. But you are probably right that LE lets this goes on for longer than it needs to. I don't know how long they have known about these sites or how they go about finding them. It sounds like it's just based on victim's sending in reports.

> LE lets this goes on for longer than it needs to

There's an incredibly limited amount of people working in cyber crime. Building a case, getting subpoenas takes a lot of effort. Even if something may be obvious to outsiders, building a case might still take a lot of effort. Those scarcely available people are usually put on the highest priority cases first. What they are, you might never know.

Then, if there's a network behind it you want to take down instead of only the fronts, you need to spend way more time on case building, writing, interacting with other agencies and I can go on.

Source: worked in the field.

A related example example would be all the stolen credentials over the years being sold on two or three well known clearnet forums, absolutely always described as "the dark web" in coverage.

Hope the FBI used a credit card generator so they didn't spend tax-payer money. /s

Since card generators haven't worked since like the 90s I'd guess probably not.

The FBI has no problem spending tax payer money on criminal activities: drug buys, etc. They'll (hopefully) recover it from seized funds, otherwise its just part of their budget.

Can you guess what "/s" stands for?

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