Scott Raul Esparza, DDoS, California 2023

A Texas man was sentenced to 9 months in federal prison for running a website that allowed paying users to launch powerful distributed denial of service – or DDoS – attacks that flooded tens of thousands of targeted computers with information and prevented them from being able to access the internet.

LOS ANGELES – Scott Raul Esparza, 24, of Katy, Texas, was sentenced by United States District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald who also ordered two years of supervised release with conditions including a full computer monitoring program after serving his prison sentence.

Esparza pleaded guilty on March 6 to one count of conspiracy to commit unauthorized impairment of a protected computer and one count of unauthorized impairment of a protected computer.

From 2019 to September 2022, Esparza operated and co-administrated with Shamar Shattock, 21, of Margate, Florida, a DDoS-for-hire service called “Astrostress.com.” The term “DDoS” refers to a type of computer attack in which multiple computers attempt to make connections through the Internet to a targeted computer at the same time.

Astrostress.com was a type of DDoS-for-hire service known as a “booter” service, referring to its ability to “boot” victims off the internet. Customers of Astrostress.com were offered various levels of subscriptions – depending on how many attacks they wanted to conduct and with what power – and were charged accordingly.

Esparza was responsible for procuring the attack servers and maintaining the attack functionality of Astrostress.com. Esparza also helped Shattock market the service, and he hired a co-conspirator to assist with responding to support requests from customers of the service.

Esparza was aware that his customers were using the site to attack computers that did not belong to the customers, and which the customers had no authorization to impair. Esparza personally conducted thousands of attacks using his own service.

Shamar Shattock, 21, of Margate, Florida, is awaiting sentencing for his role in the scheme and faces up to five years in federal prison.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/texas-man-sentenced-9-months-federal-prison-operating-website-offered-computer-attack