  DDoS-for-hire services, also known as booters, have commoditized DDoS attacks
and enabled abusive subscribers of these services to cheaply extort, harass and
intimidate businesses and people by knocking them offline. However, due to the
underground nature of these booters, little is known about their underlying
technical and business structure. In this paper we empirically measure many
facets of their technical and payment infrastructure. We also perform an
analysis of leaked and scraped data from three major booters---Asylum Stresser,
Lizard Stresser and VDO---which provides us with an in-depth view of their
customers and victims. Finally, we conduct a large-scale payment intervention
in collaboration with PayPal and evaluate its effectiveness. Based on our
analysis we show that these services are responsible for hundreds of thousands
of DDoS attacks and identify potentially promising methods of increasing
booters' costs and undermining these services.
