High Orbit Ion Cannon or HOIC for short is a network stress testing tool related to LOIC ; the use of both for launching DDoS attacks was popularized in recent years by the " hacktivist " group Anonymous . Unlike its "low-orbiting" cousin, this tool is is able to cause DoS through the use of HTTP floods . Additionally, Hight Orbit Ion Cannon has a built-in scripting system that accepts .hoic files called "boosters", allowing a user to implement some anti-DDoS randomization counter measures as well as increase the magnitude of his or her attack.
While it (similarly to LOIC) still has no significant obfuscation or anonymization techniques to protect the user, the use of .hoic "booster" scripts allows the user to specify a list of rotating target URLs, referrers, user agents, and headers in order to more effectively cause a DoS condition by attacking multiple pages on the same site, as well as make it seem like attacks are coming from a number of different users.