Slashdot Mirror
British Authorities Nail Online Blackmailers
Iphtashu Fitz writes "CNet's News.com is reporting that 3 men have been arrested for allegedly blackmailing websites by threatening DDoS attacks if they didn't pay between $10,000 and $55,000. Britians National Hi-Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU) worked with the targeted websites to combat the DDoS attacks and to track their origin. With the help of Russian police they identified and arrested three Russians and expect more arrests in the near future."
What if I 'allegedly threaten' to watch my sister change? Will I get arrested for being a pervert?
Arrests are invariably over allegations. In the UK, at least, we have a whole court system that determines whether the allegations were true and that only kicks in after arrest. In this case the charges were for blackmail. Blackmail is by its nature based on threats. If you're from the US then I think you call the crime "extortion" instead.
There were acording to El. Reg ten more of these crimminals who got arrested in Riga, Latvia last year. This investigation seem to have been going for a while and its good to see that scriptkiddies, mafia and mobsters are not allowed to try to extort victims this way.
"-Who said sit down?!"
-- S. Ballmer @ MSDC 2003.
Blackmail is defined as: 1. Extortion of money or something else of value from a person by the threat of exposing a criminal act or discreditable information.
While Extortion is: 1. The act of extorting; the act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power; undue exaction; overcharge.
Now since these guys weren't threatening to reveal something about the company this is garden variety extortion and not blackmail.
"Britian" -- Jesus Timothy, you're paid to edit. Be professional. Use a spellchecker.
"the gang reportedly would demand a sum of between $18,000 and $55,000 (10,000 pounds and 30,000 pounds)."
they just can't prosecute directly unless it's affecitng US business.
Correction: they can't prosecute unless the attackers are located in the US or a country that has an extradition treaty with the US. Even if the attackers are fucking up US businesses with their DDoS attacks, the US can't do anything aside from attempt to stop the attacks up to a point. The only time they can do something is if there is a lot at stake as a result of the attacks.
Also, having the Russians actually cooperate on an investigation like this is very rare. There must have been some pressure put somewhere to get their cooperation.
Now the case on jurisdiction will be interesting. Presumably the menaces were delivered over the Internet from Russia. So where was the crime committed? Are they subject to extradition?
Squirrel!
Is this a new form of terrorism?
This has been around since the dawn of man. "Do X or else I'll do Y." X can be a request for money, goods, services, actions... you name it; Y is generally always something which will harm the intended victim, whether financially, personally, or emotionally. Extortion is certainly nothing new and, while it's often terrifying for the victim, it isn't necessarily a terrorist activity.
Heck, compare the following three extortion demands:
Mild: "If you don't stop playing Doom 3 so much, I'm leaving you."
Medium: "Give me a raise or I'll alert the media about the company's fudged finances."
Intense: "Clear out of Iraq or we execute these hostages."
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Of course.. its all so simple !!! Every one else but you must be an idiot.
These attacks come from all over - not just from one or two hundred easily identifiable sources - you do not understand the scale. Huge numbers of requests, from distributed locations, converge upon one location.
So much bandwidth is generated, Tier 1 ISP's are forced to block the target IP address range.