Notification Advisory for Victims Affected by Bukoski’s Dos-For-Hire Booter Service

Anchorage, Alaska – U.S. Attorney Bryan Schroder announced that David Bukoski, 24, of Hanover Township, Pennsylvania, was recently sentenced for operating a long-running Denial of Service (DoS) for-hire service, known as Quantum Stress, which allowed paying users to conduct wide-ranging attacks on individual and corporate victim domains and networks, preventing them from being able to access the internet.  In August 2019, Bukoski pleaded guilty as charged for aiding and abetting computer intrusions, and he was sentenced for his conduct on Feb. 4, 2020.

Due to the large number of potential victims in this case, Chief U.S. District Judge Timothy M. Burgess issued an order directing the government to employ alternative victim notification procedures so that any member of the community at large who believes they may be a crime victim is made aware of their potential rights.

The government is asking that members of the community who believe they may be a victim of Bukoski’s criminal activities, to please contact (907) 271-3041 to reach the Victim-Witness Unit at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Alaska.

The victim-witness program of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Alaska, provides information, services, and support to individuals during federal prosecutions.  Case updates will be provided on the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Alaska website at https://www.justice.gov/usao-ak/case-updates. A restitution hearing in this case is scheduled for May 5, 2020, at 10:30 A.M. in Anchorage. 

According to public court filings, Bukoski became the subject of a federal investigation when FBI agents began investigating individuals in the United States and abroad operating what were suspected to be the longest running and most prevalent DoS-for-hire services.  These websites, which offered what are often called “booter” or “stresser” services, are a mechanism by which criminals can manipulate (in most cases stolen) bandwidth and architecture for the purpose of damaging the targeted victim’s access to the internet by flooding them with internet traffic with the intent of causing damage or financial loss.  The FBI’s investigation ultimately identified Bukoski as one of the individuals operating and profiting from one of these booter services under the domain “quantumstress.net.”

The investigation revealed that Bukoski made a number of different subscription plans available to his approximately 70-80,000 subscribers between 2011 and 2018, all of which entailed payment by the subscriber in exchange for some period of access to attack infrastructure controlled by Bukoski. It was further revealed that Bukoski’s booter service had been used both by individuals outside of Alaska to attack Alaskan victims, as well as individuals in Alaska to attack others outside.

This case was the product of an investigation conducted by the FBI’s Anchorage Field Office and the FBI’s Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit (CIRFU).  The case against Bukoski was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Alexander of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska.