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DDoS Extortion Attempts On the Rise

Posted by michael on from the pay-to-play dept.

John Flabasha writes "There's an excellent article that originated on the LA Times and was syndicated to Yahoo News about DDoS attacks on online gaming and one of the solutions out there. Since when did ISP null routes go out of style?" We've run a number of previous stories about DoS blackmail attempts, like this one or this one.

3 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Clarify by Kallahar · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just to clarify for everyone, this is extortion against online *gambling* companies, not online gaming.

    You can call gambling "gaming" in the offline world, but not the online -- "online gaming" is already taken :)

  2. Money laundering services by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative
    Extortion scams like that require a money laundering service to process the payments. e-Gold is apparently popular.

    Another is WebMoney, mentioned on the spammer board SpamForum.biz. It's a anonymous money transfer service in Moscow. Elaborate crypto. Special downloaded applications. Schemes for transferring money between customers, and finally out into the banking system. Accounts can be in euros, dollars, rubles, or hryvnias. Address is supposedly 71 Sadovnicheskaya Street, Moscow, Russia, 115035. Same address as the "Three Monkeys", which is a gay nightclub.

    There are a number of services like this. They come and go. There's Gold-Cash, in Latvia. There's EvoCash, at an undisclosed "offshore" location. (Well, there was EvoCash; they ceased operations on October 19th.) They even have a trade association, which rates services as "Platinum", "Gold", "Silver", "Copper", "Carbon", or "Chlorine", which gives a hint of the problems in this area.

    Then there are brokers who transfer money between these services. These can be used to perform the "rinse cycle" in money laundering. But that's another story.

  3. random figures stated as fact - film at 11... by cliveholloway · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pull your head out of your ass and check before you state a wild guess as a fact:

    "The average Russian salary is about $245 a month, but most state sector workers earn only a little more than a half of that."

    So an average Russian earns $1470 in 6 months. Well, you were only out by a factor of 15 - source.

    You don't have anything to do with elections in Florida by any chance?

    cLive ;-)

    --
    -- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism