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Gangs Extort Companies With DDoS Attacks

Posted by timothy on from the crisis-of-the-week dept.

Pcol writes "The Financial Times reports that gangs based in Eastern Europe have been launching attacks on corporate networks costing the companies millions of dollars in lost business and exposing them to blackmail. Sites have been asked to pay up to ensure they are free from Distributed Denial of Service attacks for a year. One detective reported, 'If the demand comes in for $40,000-50,000, compared to the losses they're suffering, there's an attraction for the companies to pay and hope it goes away. But there's nothing to say it will go away.'"

5 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome ... by obsidianpreacher · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    How awesome is it that I see a story I submitted posted on /. ... by someone else ...
    2003-11-12 18:40:27 Hackers Blackmail & Extort Corporations (articles,security) (rejected)
    I asked a question in my submission that I think would be really interesting to debate -- is this the first wave of the "only outlaws will have hacks" ideology that is being formed by constant C&D/DMCA/etc. ...?
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  2. must be crips... by Greenisus · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    cuz bloods kill

  3. Re:SOLUTION? by Scarblac · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    So how do you protect yourself from a DDOS attack?

    Rumour has it you can get an extra expensive "extra subscriber" account at Slashdot if you pay enough, and then they promise they won't link to you.

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  4. rrrright by SweetAndSourJesus · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    irrelevant
    adj.
    Unrelated to the matter being considered.

    So that linked article was quite relevant. The fact that you don't agree with it doesn't change that.

    1. 185 degrees is too hot. There's really no debating that. Nobody can drink coffee that hot.
    2. Do you have any sources for this claim? Far too many comlpaints?
    3. If something causes third degree burns necessitating a skin graft, it's clearly not safe.

    Finally, spilling coffee is something that is likely to happen accidentally, bashing oneself upside the head with a phone is not. It's not as if this lady decided "hey, what the hell? I think I'll just dump this scalding hot coffee into my lap!"

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    the strongest word is still the word "free"
  5. Re:Fine. Let them! by Zeinfeld · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Wouldn't increasing the intelligence of routing hardware enough to limit DoS emanating from single home machines also give the ISPs a lot more insentive to block home run servers, p2p clients, check for NAT and make sure you don't visit "unsavory" locations on the net?

    ISPs would be much less bothered about people running servers from home if the chance of them being compromised was lower. If an ISP wants to do any of the things you mention they can pretty much do it at the moment, it is pretty easy to block incomming server traffic, just drop incomming SYN packets at the main router. Same goes for censorship.

    The proposal I am making requires the regulator to maintain state which makes it difficult to implement in a router.

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