Taking on an Online Extortionist

Posted by timothy on Wednesday May 4, 2005 @04:12AM from the and-shove-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "When an online exortionist comes a knocking, threatining a DDoS, do you pay or fight? For many, paying may seem like a sensible option when compared to going out of buisness. CSO Magazine has a riveting article about how an online gambling site and a DDoS specialist teamed up to take on such an extortionist. When everybody else was rolling over and paying, this company risked its very existence to fight back. From the article: '"The attack went to 1.5Gb, with bursts up to 3Gb. It wasn't targeted at one thing. It was going to routers, DNS servers, mail servers, websites. It was like a battlefield, where there's an explosion over here, then over there, then it's quiet, then another explosion somewhere else," says Lyon. "They threw everything they had at us. I was just in shock."'"

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Never pay by nuggz · 2005-05-04 04:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

If they actually get money, they'll do it again and again.
Any measure of success will encourage more of the same behaviour.
Re:Fight! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-05-04 04:25 · Score: 5, Insightful

Presumably, they will give you some way to pay them (else what is the point?). Point the cops and or feds at that contact, and see what happens.
This is where R'ingTFA comes in...

If no joy from the authorities, I'm sure your local newsrag would be glad to shame the cops into doing something. Of course, if the extortionist is overseas, things might be a little difficult.

Again, this is where R'ingTFA comes in. I'd also add that one downside of moving your business to an unregulated third world country is that neither the local journalists nor the local cops are especially interested in your gringo problems. I don't understand why Scotland Yard bothered with him.