International law enforcement seizes 53 DDoS-for-hire domains in Operation PowerOFF

Law enforcement agencies from 21 countries have taken down 53 domains and arrested four individuals as part of an operation targeting commercial distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack services. The coordinated action, dubbed Operation PowerOFF, disrupted DDoS-for-hire infrastructure used by more than 75,000 cybercriminals. Authorities seized technical infrastructure including servers and databases, gaining access to information on over 3 million criminal user accounts. Investigators are now sending warning emails and letters to identified users while executing 25 search warrants across multiple jurisdictions. Europol described DDoS-for-hire services as one of the most prolific and easily accessible trends in cybercrime, allowing individuals with limited technical knowledge to launch disruptive attacks against websites, servers, and networks. These services have been used for various motives including financial extortion, hacktivism, and competitive disruption. The participating countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Operation PowerOFF represents the latest phase in global efforts to dismantle criminal DDoS infrastructure. In August 2025, U.S. authorities announced the takedown of the RapperBot DDoS botnet that had targeted victims in more than 80 countries since 2021.