It looks like scammers are impersonating one of Russia’s most notorious hacking groups in order to extort victims out of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoin.

Sergiy Usatyuk and a co-conspirator enabled attackers to use only a web browser to launch a DDoS attack capable of knocking target sites offline.

The DDoS attack is a reminder of the prevalence of this blunt attack method and of a growing security market for defenses against it.

The defendants, Paras Jha, Josiah White and Dalton Norman, were all labeled co-conspirators by the Department of Justice.

Dozens of literal script kiddies were arrested in a European police operation targeting DDoS-for-hire users across the continent. The action marked the beginning of a youth awareness campaign trying to get tech savvy teenagers to use their powers for, well, anything but cybercrime.