Lizard Squad, the notorious hacker group that has previously claimed to have taken down the Xbox Live and PlayStation Network on Christmas, is now selling its services, offering to take down a website for prices as low as $2.99.
Lizard Squad launched the Lizard Stresser website on Dec. 30, where Internet users can purchase distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks to target a specific website.
DDoS attacks flood websites with fake Internet traffic, which in turn prevents legitimate traffic from entering the websites. This kind of attack is one of the more popular techniques used by hackers to shut down certain websites being targeted.
DDoS attacks are illegal when carried out on websites that aren't owned by the attacker. Lizard Stresser says that it is a legitimate way to test the ability of websites to withstand such attacks, though given the reputation of the hacker group behind the website, that will probably not be the reason for most of the services that will be requested through Lizard Stresser.
"Permission is granted to stress test dedicated servers and networks owned by you," wrote Lizard Squad on the website's terms of service. "This is the opportunity to make your firewalls better, not to misuse against the law."
The launch of Lizard Stresser is probably related to why Lizard Squad disrupted the gaming networks of Xbox and PlayStation, as those attacks essentially served as the marketing campaign for the DDoS request website.
Through the website, Internet users can request to take down an IP address. The length of time for the website to bog down determines the price of the request, as a shutdown for 100 seconds is priced at $2.99 while a shutdown for 8 hours is priced at $69.99.
Lizard Stresser caters to both beginners and advanced users, with the only requirements needed to take down a website being the port and IP address of the target, along with the time for the attack to be launched. The website even offers tech support to its customers.
According to the website, the attacks that are carried out through the service launch fake Internet traffic with an average load of 5 Gbps, with a maximum load of 20 Gbps. Such loads would be effective in taking down websites, especially for those that do not have effective DDoS protection measures in place. For the websites that do, Lizard Stresser says that it has the means to counteract the security measures.
Lizard Stresser, however, is currently down. Lizard Squad tweeted that they are switching servers for the website, though that reason is unconfirmed.
