Photo/Illutration A service website for DDoS attacks that has been shut down by a foreign investigation team. (From a website)

The National Police Agency arrested Atsuhiro Akasaka, a 25-year-old plumber in Oita, on Aug. 6 on suspicion of conducting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against a Tokyo-based publisher. 

A DDoS attack is a cyberattack that sends an overwhelming amount of data to a target website’s servers, causing the site to crash or to become inaccessible.

These types of attack are common and cause damage around the world.

There are overseas proxy service sites that allow users to carry out DDoS attacks by registering, paying a fee and specifying the attack target.

The NPA said the suspect in this case used one of these DDoS-for-hire sites.

Europol is leading an ongoing investigation to shut down such sites, and provided information about suspects in Japan to the NPA, leading to the arrest.

According to the NPA’s special cyber investigation unit, Akasaka is suspected of sending a large amount of data to the server of a Tokyo-based publishing company through a DDoS-for-hire website twice on March 17, 2022.

These attacks overloaded the publishing company’s website, rendering it unviewable for about 1.5 hours total.

Akasaka admitted to the charges and said he had committed other DDoS attacks as well, the police said.

An international joint investigation involving the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and investigative agencies from European countries began tackling DDoS attack service websites in 2018.

Europol announced in December 2022 that it had shut down some 50 DDoS-for-hire sites and arrested seven administrators.

The NPA joined this international investigation in September 2023.

Foreign investigative agencies provided information on attack sites and users in Japan to the NPA.

The fees for the site Akasaka used ranged from several hundred to more than 10,000 yen ($67) per month, and Akasaka had signed up for a plan costing a little over 1,000 yen, police said.

Several persons in Japan are suspected of using this site, the NPA said.

The predecessor organization of the NPA’s cyber special investigation unit was established in April 2022, although it is the first time that an arrest has been made through an independent investigation.

According to a survey conducted by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, there were 55.61 million DDoS attacks worldwide in 2023, a 1.6-fold increase from the previous year.

Of these, 8.96 million attacks were directed at targets in Japan, 14.7 times more than in the previous year.

(This article was written by Shimpachi Yoshida, a senior staff writer, and Daichi Itakura.)

Related News