It was designed to replace the Low Orbit Ion Cannon which was developed by Praetox Technologies and later released into the public domain.

[8] Apart from allowing user agents to implement some form of randomization countermeasures the booster files can and have been used to increase the magnitude of the attack.

[10] Simply described, HOIC is a program for sending HTTP POST and GET requests at a computer under attack, that uses a lulz-inspired graphical interface.

The denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the target URL is accomplished by sending excessive traffic in an attempt to overload the site and bring it down.

Then a booster file is added which uses .hoic extension to define dynamic request attributes, launch attacks on multiple pages within the same website and help evade some defense filters.

[16] In the United States, denial-of-service attacks may be considered a federal crime under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act with penalties that include up to ten years of imprisonment.

They were charged with one count of "conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer" for the events that occurred between September 16, 2010 and January 2, 2011.

[17] DDoS attacks are federal offenses in the United States and are prosecuted by the Department of Justice under USC Title 18, Section 1030.

[19] DDoS mitigation usually works on the principle of distribution, which is basically intelligent routing of traffic to avoid congestion and prevent overload at a single URL.

[22] Finally, as the day drew to a close, the website belonging to the FBI was hit repeatedly before it ultimately succumbed to attacks and acquired a “Tango Down” status.