Russian Revenge; Hackers Paid $1250 for Attacks

Western Countries under Massive Cyber Assaults

Russian hackers have up their hacking attack on western countries with a new ‘DDOSIA’ crowdsourcing campaign. This revenge war is just one of the latest addition to the brainchild of the KillNet pro-Russian organization. The state-sponsored threat actors have been busy employing other skilled hackers to help in the fight against countries supporting Ukraine.

Of course, there is money offered to volunteers, who want to join the team. The task of the hired hacking group is to actively disrupt western businesses with denial-of-service (DDOS) assaults.

With these western targets, the affected companies would appear offline, when hit by these nefarious DDoS assaults. In addition, normally monetary loss and the interruption of service are the main results, while not having any effect on the target’s security.

And thus, the entire notion behind the hackers’ cyber warfare is to cause service interruptions. Also, depending on the effects on businesses, DDoS assaults have featured prominently as the de facto weapon of hacktivists fighting their own battle in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

According to the Radware cyber security team, the potency of DDoS cyber attacks far outweighs the fact that they are quick to execute and extremely devastating. Especially, with a financial incentive to attract the best hacking groups from the dark web.

And while this novel approach entices regular threat actors, on the other hand, Hacktivist groups usually join hacking campaigns for the cause. They do not demand financial compensation when they are needed to launch DDoS assaults on opposing targets.

Thus, being compensated financially for this campaign creates increased motivation for the DDOSIA crowdsourcing recruitment drive. This hacking campaign could get the attention of hackers, who may even oppose the Russian war on Ukraine.

The DDOSIA Rampage

The organizer “NoName057(16)” of the DDOSIA project first surfaced in March 2022. Launching its crowdsourcing campaign between August and September, the campaign has since been documented by the Avast cyber security firm.

Openly describing the organization, the Avast researchers note that the DDoS module was obtained from the “Bobik” remote access trojan (RAT), which was previously linked to the RedLine hackers in 2020.

Three months of research, according to Avast, shows that NoName057(16) had only a 40 percent success rate with DDoS attacks, which were launched on companies located in Ukraine.

With the compensation plan for DDOSIA, the organizers’ payroll includes hackers rated in the top 10. These top tier threat actors are responsible for the attacks recently launched on American airports. So far, the boosted prize has attracted more than 13,000 subscribers to the channel.

For a successful attack wave 80,000 rubles ($1,250) were paid, another 50,000 rubles ($800) were the prize money for second tiered hackers, and lower tier contributors received 20,000 rubles ($300).

As a targeted weapon, DDoS attacks are easy to launch against an enemy with crippling effects. In addition, being considered as a premium cyber warfare weapon; it is used by most hacktivist groups fighting on either the Russian or Ukrainian side.