Denial of service attack victim speaks out

Post by **Tami** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 4:18 pm

Denial of service attack victim speaks out
by Will Sturgeon

Breaking the silence and breaking the stranglehold of the extortionists...

The founder of an online payment system has spoken to silicon.com about his experience of being targeted by Russian gangsters who threatened to destroy his website and his business if he didn't pay them $10,000 to leave him alone.

To this day his website is under continual attack.

Asif Malik, founder of NoChex, said his first contact with these hackmailers was in August 2004 when he received an email saying his website would be taken down by a denial of service attack if the money wasn't paid into an account based in Latvia.

"We'd received loads of emails like this before and my initial reaction was just ignore it," Malik told silicon.com. "But an hour later the site went down. They'd attacked us with 155Mb of data."

Malik was in no doubt what this would mean for his business.

"If they did what they said they'd do, which was attack the site for 30 days continuously, then we would have been unable to process transactions and we would have lost all our merchants.

"We'd not be in business today," he added.

Such an attack, often generated by a network of compromised machines all directing traffic at a particular server or website, will overload and bring down a website.

Malik then contacted the Russian gangsters behind the extortion scam and asked for one day to get the money together. They agreed to the delay and stopped the attack.

However, during that time Malik contacted his ISP Pipex who were already threatening to "black hole" his website as the attack was impacting the whole Pipex network and asked them to implement a Cisco Guard solution which effectively rerouted all traffic and cleaned it of the malicious traffic being generated by the crippling denial of service.

"The next morning they were emailing asking 'where is our money?'. When they realised we weren't going to pay-up they launched another attack but this time it had no effect."

Predictably this did not go down well. Malik received a string of abusive and threatening emails.

And to this day the attacks continue - though they have little impact on the NoChex website.

"I think they are still looking for a new way in," said Malik. Though he now employs several penetration testing companies to continually check he's leaving no door open for the Russian extortionists to return.

Malik reported the attack to Scotland Yard but as yet has heard nothing of the ongoing investigation.

Many other victims of such attacks, most commonly targeted at businesses such as online casinos, bookmakers and payment services, whose businesses are very time sensitive, have also spoken out about their problems.

Speaking of his own experiences of the problem David Yu, COO of Betfair, last year told silicon.com such a discourse is important as openness and shared understanding will eventually defeat the problem.

Paul King, chief security architect at Cisco, told silicon.com: "Criminals aren't looking for a sophisticated challenge. They just want to make money. If somebody thinks they can bring your site down and can ask for money then you need protection."

According to John Whitty, CTO of Pipex, those committing denial of service attacks can now launch around 500Mb of data at a website at any one time. There are very few companies, if any, in the world whose website would withstand such a barrage undefended.

[url=\"http://management.silicon.com/smedirector/0,39024679,39130810,00.htm\"]source: Silicon[/url]

Adrasteia · Post by **Adrasteia** » Wed Jun 01, 2005 6:25 pm

i never knew dos attacks could be used in such a way...i wonder how much money these people get paid....as it doesnt sound like scotland yard are doing a thing....i guess i should have expected those tactics as used on regular shop owners by malicious groups would eventually move onto the web, but it just never crossed my mind.
nem

Josh · Post by **Josh** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 2:24 pm

Some people are just really stupid..

ner0 · Post by **ner0** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 8:39 pm

it's good to see that with the right technology these attacks can be stopped, although I guess he had to fork out quite a sum for the security measures and penetration testers... tis just a shame not enough legal action is taken, I hate how; although it's usually blatantly obvious who's instigating the attacks, the companies who -could- do something to put a stop to it do absolutely nada

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Post by **Tami** » Thu Jun 02, 2005 8:47 pm

I think the biggest problem is that the legal systems haven't caught up with technology, hence the lack of action being taken by law enforcement and the courts. It takes so long to get new laws sworn in, that by the time they've made the new laws, technology is already 3 or 4 steps ahead. Alot of the debate time regarding new laws seems to be held up by politicians who are unfamiliar with the issues they are dealing with, so need to have everything explained to them in minute little details and hope that they understand the seriousness of the issues they are dealing with and the need for powerful, tight laws.

radar · Post by **radar** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 6:13 am

[quote name=\'Adaera\' date=\'Jun 3 2005, 06:17 AM\']I think the biggest problem is that the legal systems haven't caught up with technology, hence the lack of action being taken by law enforcement and the courts. It takes so long to get new laws sworn in, that by the time they've made the new laws, technology is already 3 or 4 steps ahead. Alot of the debate time regarding new laws seems to be held up by politicians who are unfamiliar with the issues they are dealing with, so need to have everything explained to them in minute little details and hope that they understand the seriousness of the issues they are dealing with and the need for powerful, tight laws.
[right][post=\"24728\"]<{POST_SNAPBACK}>[/post][/right][/quote]

Two words:
John Howard.

Post by **Tami** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 6:27 am

lol....took me a few seconds to realize you were talking about your PM, not the [url=\"http://www.johnhoward.ca/jhsback.htm\"][u]John Howard Society[/u][/url]

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So...did you mean that your PM is up on the new technology, or he's still on a Commodore 64?

Adrasteia · Post by **Adrasteia** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 12:12 pm

lmao@ commodore 64
wait, i had one of those

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what you said about laws being sworn in makes sense, if by the time a pc is put on the shelf for sale its already out of date, i dont see the people on c-span being able to catch up any time soon!
nem

radar · Post by **radar** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:05 pm

Worse. I'm sure our PM is still chiseling stuff into rock.

Vercz · Post by **Vercz** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 1:10 pm

[color=\"green\"]dont get me wrong, i <3 our PM ..but he does look a tad neanderthal on occasions

/blum.gif\' class=\'bbc_emoticon\' alt=\':P\' /> [/color]

Adrasteia · Post by **Adrasteia** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 12:35 pm

lol----pictures pictures! the USA has a monkey guy in charge...maybe theres a trend here...

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nem

Jimmy · Post by **Jimmy** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 8:43 am

John Howard is cool. Interesting story as well, i never thought of it being used that way either.