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."
...Slashdot is rumoured to be investigating a new method of securing additional "revenue"...
And now Slashdot will DDoS them.
That can get you arrested? What if I 'allegedly threaten' to watch my sister change? Will I get arrested for being a pervert?
...and i will not submit news about your site on /.
This is good. It may only be three people, but that's three less people who are trying to take advantage of the Internet and the people who use it. And I say good job on the cooperation between British and Russian officials who got the three guys. :)
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
The scale and scope of these attacks, and the amounts of money paid to these people, how far that money went, how many countries it was wired through, and the amount of law enforcement and private sector work involved in getting even this far would shock many of you.
Contrary to what some say, the US authorities *DO* care what's going on... they just can't prosecute directly unless it's affecitng US business.
These people and similar operators have extored millions of dollars in the last 12 months alone.
I'm sure many will come out and say "Oh well if you had just built your network properly...".. oh, if only it were that simple. These attacks have come in at over 4Gbps... and no matter how you slice it, that's a shitload of bandwidth.
The slashdot effect is jack shit compared to what these guys have unleashed for WEEKS at a time on one site alone.
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.
I'm just anxious to see a real DoS attack. Any idea where I can find some code to see how it actually works?
I'm probably feeding a troll here, but what the hell. Why do you need to see code? It's little more than a massive surge in traffic which looks legitimate. Try this pseudocode on for size:
while(1)
- recursively get victim's entire website
Now spread that across 100,000 zombie machines, each capable of pulling in an average of maybe 20KB/s. Suddenly the victim's dealing with 2GB/s of traffic or, more likely, not dealing with it as the traffic would thoroughly saturate not only the victim's website but also the entire hosting provider's network.
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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."
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