European police have sent an email to 75,000 people asking them to stop DDoS attacks

A coalition of global law enforcement agencies has sent emails to more than 75,000 suspected cybercriminals who have paid for a service to launch cyberattacks that can take websites down.

On Thursday, Europol announced the coordinated operation against several distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) services, which allow criminals to launch cyberattacks without needing to have hacking skills or manage their own infrastructure.

Part of the law enforcement action – dubbed Operation PowerOFF – involved Europol sending warning emails and letters to more than 75,000 people suspected of using these DDoS-for-hire services.

Europol said it obtained information about suspected cybercriminals by hacking and seizing servers associated with these services, allowing police to identify their registered users.

The crackdown also resulted in four arrests, the takedown of 53 domains and police executing 24 search warrants.

DDoS attacks remain relatively common due to their ability to cause disruption while being relatively easy to execute, thanks in part to services for hire. Last year, Cloudflare said it mitigated what it called the largest DDoS attack to date, which peaked at 29.7 terabits per second. Over the past few years, the FBI has conducted several operations against DDoS-for-hire services.