Over recent weeks there has been a lot of interest in DDoS botnets – that is to say, rentable botnets that provide DDoS as a managed service. I’ve spoken to a number of people about how easy this is to do, and how practically anyone who happens to know how to use a popular Internet search engine can probably locate the sellers or the hacking message boards they hang around. Perhaps one of the finer points missing about the discussion of renting DDoS botnets pertains to the size.
A fairly typical rate for DDoS botnet rental hovers around the $200 for 10,000 bot agents per day. The rate per day is fairly flexible, and influenced by the actual size of the botnet that the bot master is trying to section off for DDoS services and where those hosts are physically situated. For example, some DDoS providers make a virtue of allocating bots that are located within a particular country and their average Internet bandwidth. Meanwhile, you’ll find providers at the other end of the spectrum offering DDoS services at substantially lower rates.
