I’d like to add onto this with examples of other malicious services that operated similarly to Synapse, in this case, DDOS for Hire services.
Article TLDR:
- FBI took down 13 DDOS for hire services
- they used subscription based payments
- had entire terms of service “agreements” that you would not use their service to DDOS people.
- In 2020 the FBI did the same, seizing 48 DDOS for hire services.
- In 2018 the FBI seized 15 DDOS for hire services.
- One service operated for a decade, the domain registry had the guy’s real name and address, and had 2 million+ users and launched at least 30 million ‘distinct’ DDOS attacks.
This is why Cloudflare sells their tunneling at a loss for small website owners. It hides their IP such that hackers have to deal with Cloudflare first, and it means they don’t have to worry about a couple angry nerds nuking their minecraft server with one of the biggest botnets in history.
Easiest option was to buy out Synapse.