Alaska FBI targets DDoS-for-hire sites in international crackdown
Published 10:00 pm Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Federal authorities in Alaska have seized internet domains tied to a service accused of allowing customers to pay for denial-of-service attacks against targets around the world.
The Justice Department announced Tuesday, Sept. 15, that FBI’s Anchorage field office seized domains associated with NightmareStresser, which federal officials describe as one of the world’s longest-running DDoS-for-hire services.
According to a federal seizure warrant affidavit, NightmareStresser was used to launch hundreds of thousands of actual or attempted attacks against victims worldwide since 2022. The Justice Department said the service also facilitated attacks targeting victims in Alaska, though Tuesday’s announcement did not identify them.
Distributed denial-of-service attacks overwhelm a website or server with large amounts of illegitimate traffic, potentially slowing service or knocking the target offline entirely.
Services that sell access to those attacks are often known as “booters” or “stressers.” Customers can pay operators to direct attacks against a selected target without developing their own network of compromised computers.
Federal authorities say the services have been used against educational institutions, government agencies, gaming platforms, and other internet users in the United States and abroad.
The Anchorage FBI office carried out the latest seizures in coordination with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Federal Policing Northwest Region. The action was part of operation PowerOFF, an international law enforcement campaign targeting infrastructure used by DDoS-for-hire operators and their customers.
Tuesday’s seizure continues several years of federal enforcement involving investigators and prosecutors in Alaska.
During the past eight years, investigations involving the U.S. attorney’s offices in Alaska and Los Angeles have resulted in charges against 12 defendants accused of facilitating DDoS-for-hire services and the seizure of more than 100 associated internet domains, according to the Justice Department.
Officials say the relatively easy availability of booter services has lowered the barrier for people seeking to carry out cyberattacks. Instead of building their own botnet — a network of compromised computers or other devices — a customer can pay an existing service to generate attack traffic.
The FBI says using a booter or stresser service to attack another person’s computer system can violate the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Possible consequences include criminal charges, fines, prison time, and seizure of electronic devices.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Adam Alexander and Ainsley McNerney of the district of Alaska are prosecuting the matter.
