Ddosia

DDosia is a threat actor group that has been actively involved in executing Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against government and private organization websites, primarily targeting Western nations supporting Ukraine amidst the ongoing Russian invasion. In July 2022, DDoSia launched a crowdsourced botnet project named "DDOSIA," which mirrors other politically motivated initiatives such as the pro-Ukrainian Liberator by disBalancer and the fully automated DDoS bot project by the IT ARMY of Ukraine. The DDOSIA project uses hacktivists who voluntarily download and install a bot on their computers to launch denial-of-service attacks. NoName057(16), a pro-Russian hacktivist group unaffiliated with Killnet, generated a following of 40,000 members, and its DDosia volunteer botnet project gained 7,000 members. The DDOSIA project stands out by offering financial incentives to top contributors of successful denial-of-service attacks, effectively gamifying DDoS attacks. The Russian group has used every attack capability of the DDosia botnet, employing a wide range of direct-path attack vectors against multiple targets. The latest iteration of the DDoSia software introduced enhanced encryption for data flows between users and their command-and-control (C2) servers, aiming to improve infrastructure stability. Despite these advancements, the DDoSia system faced stability challenges due to frequent changes in C2 servers in 2024. As per Radware's research, NoName has successfully recruited hacktivists via its Telegram channel and offered to pay people willing to install the DDoSia software. The DDoSia’s Telegram project has nearly 20,000 users, while NoName057(16) channels have surpassed 60,000, doubling since 2023. Although DDoSia likely uses its servers to participate actively in attacks, it lacks automated IP address change despite frequent C2 changes. The Sekoia report noted that while the latest software version improved data transmission, DDoSia admins continued to change the C2 servers frequently in 2024.