Tag Archives: stop-dos

Bitcoin Startup Quits Operation Due to Never-Ending DDoS Attacks

Bitcoin’s Secure Wallet Service Coinkite Inc. Closing Down due to never-ending DDoS Attacks and Governmental Nagging Bitcoin exchanges around the world face cyber attacks every now and then, some owners give up while some fight back . In the case of Bitcoin startup Coinkite Inc., it is now officially announced that its secure wallet service, which started in 2012, will be closed within the next 30 days. It has also been made clear that customers must withdraw funds from their wallets by the end of this period. If any of the users fail to do so then their Bitcoin will be automatically credited to them. Prior to closing down all of the services, its TOR accessibility and application program interface of Coinkite will be closed for 14 days while their annual pre-paid plans’ prorated balances will continue to be refunded. The startup was under DDoS attacks for last three years The company now aims to focus upon hardware-oriented products such as the upcoming physical Bitcoin project Opendime. It will be a full-fledged standalone Bitcoin terminal or hardware wallet that will be equipped with a printer as well as QR scanner. Moreover, the company will be focusing upon hardware products for security optimization and authentication, all-purpose standalone Bitcoin solutions and services for hosting Bitcoin hot wallets. Since its inception, Coinkite was marketed as the most convenient and secure way to accept and exchange Bitcoin, the digital currency. The company claimed that it provided users the world’s “most advanced web wallet system.” It was considered a system that empowered customers and merchants to “BUY, SELL, ACCEPT and STORE Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, in both the online and physical worlds.” Why is Coinkite Closing the Secure Wallet Service NOW? The decision apparently is the outcome of the constant harassment that the online Bitcoin wallet service has been dealing with. In a blog post , it was revealed by the company that they had been receiving Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attacks constantly over the past three years. They also have become tired of the attempts by governmental agencies for interrupting into their clients’ privacy. The CEO of the company Rodolfo Novak told CoinDesk that they wanted to shift their focus from software to hardware because their meager resources were being drained further by the “bullshit” that they have been experiencing. “We want to write software, not deal with lawyers and DDoSing…One of the main issues with SaaS is all the free users and need support and we want to provide good support. All these things have costs,” clarified Novak. Source: https://www.hackread.com/bitcoin-exchange-ddos-attacks/

View article:
Bitcoin Startup Quits Operation Due to Never-Ending DDoS Attacks

D.O.J. Charges Iran-Sponsored Hackers with Dozens of DDoS Attacks on Major Financial Institutions

No less than 46 U.S. financial institutions, as well as a dam in New York, were allegedly targeted. On Thursday morning, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against seven Iranian citizens allegedly funded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, accusing them of launching a coordinated cyber-attack against a minimum of 46 American financial institutions, as well as a major New York dam. In a press conference with some of American law enforcement’s heaviest hitters, including F.B.I. director James Comey and U.S. district attorney Preet Bharara , Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that members of two Iran-based computer companies, ITSecTeam and the Mersad Company, had launched coordinated distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the Web sites of dozens of financial institutions, including the New York Stock Exchange, Bank of America, Capital One, ING, and AT&T, disabling them and preventing their customers from accessing their accounts. In addition, one of the alleged hackers, Hamid Firoozi , was said to have illegally accessed a computer in charge of the Bowman Dam in Rye, New York, giving him the ability to remotely control its operations and potentially cause “a threat to public health or safety.” According to the Department of Justice, the two groups received funding from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, the elite government militia tasked with defending Islamic law in Iran. Lynch said in a statement that the attacks not only cost these companies “tens of millions of dollars” to restore their Web sites, but highlighted how foreign cyber-attacks have become a major threat to U.S. national security. “In unsealing this indictment, the Department of Justice is sending a powerful message: that we will not allow any individual, group, or nation to sabotage American financial institutions or undermine the integrity of fair competition in the operation of the free market,” she said in the prepared statement. According to the indictment, the DDoS attacks took place over 176 days between 2011 and 2013. The attacks on U.S. targets took place after Iran’s nuclear capabilities were sabotaged by the Stuxnet virus, believed to have been a joint effort between the U.S. and Israeli governments, in mid-2010. The indictment also comes after a series of high-profile cyber-attacks on the United States government. In 2014 alone, the government experienced more than 61,000 attacks on their computer systems, affecting several administrative agencies such as the State Department, the Energy Department, and the White House. Last year, the Office of Personnel Management (O.P.M.) was the target of the largest attack to date, in which Chinese hackers stole sensitive personal information from 21.5 million past and present government employees. During the press conference Thursday morning, Comey said that the indictment was meant to show the world that the U.S. government was ready to respond to foreign-based cyber-attacks, no matter where they came from or the scale of the attack. “By calling out the individuals and nations who use cyber-attacks to threaten American enterprise, as we have done in this indictment, we will change behavior,” he said. Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/03/doj-iran-hacker-indictment

See more here:
D.O.J. Charges Iran-Sponsored Hackers with Dozens of DDoS Attacks on Major Financial Institutions

Hackers Target NASA with DDoS Attack, Claim to Shutdown Email Servers

Anonymous-linked Hackers Attack NASA’s System for Allegedly Keeping a Huge Secret Anonymous is a loosely connected group of hacktivists that doesn’t appreciate governments keeping secrets or conducting operations that somehow violate user privacy. So, to register their resentment what they do is attack the agency’s systems and hack critically important data. The same modus operandi was employed by an Anonymous-linked team of hackers called New World Hacking and AnonCorruption when they learned that NASA was “holding back information on many things, not just one.” NASA’s computer systems, allegedly, were attacked by New World Hacking team’s hacktivists and their supporters on Sunday night as part of a bigger campaign against government cover-ups called Operation Censorship or #OPCensorship. The hackers claimed that they have managed to shut down the space agency’s primary website and email servers. The attack was materialized through the most commonly used weapon called DDoS attack . However, NASA’s website was still found to be operational instead of being down as per the claims from the hacker group. But, the New World Hacking team provided proof, which suggested that some of the space agency’s systems were suffering from the aftershocks of what is termed as a digital blitzkrieg. Remember, the NWH is the same group who claimed responsibility for shutting down Xbox online service , BBC news servers , HSBC UK’s online banking, the official website for Donald Trump’s election campaign, Salt Lake city Police and airport websites . “NWH hackers vow to target Trump in their next cyber attack” While talking to HackRead, the group stated that NASA was attacked because they were convinced that the agency has important information about the extremist organization ISIS but it is withholding the information. The group also refused to reveal the secret information about ISIS. The attack hasn’t been confirmed or denied by NASA and we cannot possibly verify if the hacktivists’ claims are true or not since the site is working. Hackers also shared an inside screenshot and claimed that they could access the NASA’s Internet email server: Hackers claim they were able to get into the NASA server, however, the security implemented on the server didn’t let them go any further “We believe NASA is holding back information on many things, not just one. The main thing we suspect they are holding back some more information on ISIS that the public needs to know.We won’t tell the public what we think they are hiding – we will let NASA explain.” They also added that this attack is more like a practice run for the most important campaign against Donald Trump, which they plan to execute on April Fool’s day. “We want Trump to know that he is next,” the hackers added. Source: https://www.hackread.com/hackers-ddos-shutdown-nasa-website-email-server/

View article:
Hackers Target NASA with DDoS Attack, Claim to Shutdown Email Servers

Swedish newspaper websites shut down in DDoS attack

The online editions of Sweden’s main newspapers were knocked out for several hours by unidentified hackers at the weekend, police said Sunday as they launched an investigation. The attack was “extremely dangerous and serious,” the head of the Swedish Media Publishers’ Association, Jeanette Gustafsdotter, told Swedish news agency TT. “To threaten access to news coverage is a threat to democracy,” she said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which either partially or totally shut down the sites of Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen, Aftonbladet, Dagens Industri, Sydsvenskan and Helsingborgs Dagblad on Saturday evening from about 8:00 pm (1900 GMT) until about 11:00 pm (2200 GMT). Several experts quoted in the media suggested the sites were subjected to distributed denial-of-services (DDoS) attacks, in which hackers hijack multiple computers to send a flood of data to the target, crippling its computer system. Police said in a statement they had launched an investigation, and Swedish intelligence was also being kept abreast of developments. An anonymous threat was issued on a Twitter account shortly before the attack. The account was attributed to J@_notJ. “The following days attacks against the Swedish government and media spreading false propaganda will be targeted,” the first tweet read. An hour later, a second tweet read: “This is what happens when you spread false propaganda. Aftonbladet.se #offline”. Source: https://www.enca.com/technology/swedish-newspaper-websites-shut-down-hacker-attack

More:
Swedish newspaper websites shut down in DDoS attack

Attacker leaves “SECURITY TIPS” after invading anti-DDoS firm

Staminus, a California-based internet hosting provider that specializes in helping sites stay online when distributed denial of service (DDoS) attackers try to elbow them off, was itself the target of a cyber broadside last week. At any rate, it started last week, with reports of the company’s site being down as of Thursday. But as of Monday, it was again, or maybe still, sucking wind. Staminus on Friday put out a statement confirming that its network security had been popped and invaded, systems had been “temporarily” taken offline, and customer data had been published online. The company posted a series of updates on Twitter and Facebook while its website was down, explaining that this was a “rare event.” But even while Staminus techs were scrambling to drag the company’s site back online, whoever mugged it was dumping its private data online in what security journalist Brian Krebs called a “classic ‘hacker e-zine’ format” called “F**k ’em all.” Krebs reports that the page included links to download databases reportedly stolen from Staminus and from Intreppid, another Staminus project that targets customers looking for protection against large DDoS attacks. The huge data dump included customer names and email addresses, database table structures, routing tables, support tickets, credit card numbers (according to Krebs, at any rate; Ars Technica’s Sean Gallagher didn’t see any when he viewed the dump), and other sensitive data. A Staminus customer who requested anonymity confirmed to Ars that his data was part of the dump. Those behind the dump claimed to have gained control of Staminus’s routers and to have reset them to factory settings. The hacker “e-zine” that contained all the sensitive data began with a note from the attacker titled “TIPS WHEN RUNNING A SECURITY COMPANY.” Then, it went on to list tips for what were supposedly the security holes found during the breach: Use one root password for all the boxes Expose PDU’s [power distribution units in server racks] to WAN with telnet auth Never patch, upgrade or audit the stack Disregard PDO [PHP Data Objects] as inconvenient Hedge entire business on security theatre Store full credit card info in plaintext Write all code with wreckless [sic] abandon On Thursday, Staminus reported that some services were back online or in the process of being brought back and that “We expect full service restoration soon.” Then, another message posted on Friday pointed to the statement from the company’s CEO. That was the last message. What followed was radio silence, unbroken as of Monday evening. Krebs pointed out that the attack isn’t surprising: anti-DDoS providers are a common target for attackers. Source: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/03/15/attacker-leaves-security-tips-after-invading-anti-ddos-firm-staminus/

Original post:
Attacker leaves “SECURITY TIPS” after invading anti-DDoS firm

FBI arrests Massachusetts man for Anonymous 2014 cyberattack on Boston Children’s Hospital

The hacktivist group launched multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks against the hospital’s servers in protest of the controversial custody case of Justina Pelletier. The FBI has arrested a hacker suspected of participating in Anonymous’ 2014 DDoS attack against Boston Children’s Hospital, The Boston Globe has reported. He was taken into custody after being rescued from a small boat off the coast of Cuba by a Disney cruise ship. Martin Gottesfeld, 31, of Somerville, Massachusetts, was arrested on Feb. 17 in Miami. He’s due to appear in U.S. District Court in Boston, where he’ll be charged with of conspiring to damage the computers at Boston Children’s and another facility in Framingham, Massachusetts, according to the Globe. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. In April 2014 – in protest of the controversial custody case of Justina Pelletier, who was being kept a patient at Boston Children’s as a ward of the state against the wishes of her parents – hacktivist group Anonymous launched multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks that targeted the hospital’s servers and hamstrung its operations for a week. According to the Globe, the FBI had previously questioned Gottesfeld in 2014. He admitted then that he had posted a YouTube clip calling for attacks on Boston Children’s, but denied participating in them. It’s unclear why he wasn’t charged at that time. But a tip this week about his rescue at sea led agents to Florida to take him into custody. He had three laptops with him, according to an FBI affidavit. In a statement, Boston Children’s thanked federal officials for “apprehending the hacker who led the attack and holding him accountable” – also thanking its own employees, “who assisted the FBI throughout its investigation and who helped build the comprehensive systems and procedures that were able to thwart the attack and protect confidential information.” Source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/fbi-arrests-massachusetts-man-anonymous-2014-cyberattack-boston-childrens-hospital

Link:
FBI arrests Massachusetts man for Anonymous 2014 cyberattack on Boston Children’s Hospital

Anonymous: Hackers plan DDoS campaign against Israeli military to protest Mohammed Al-Qeeq detention

Hacktivists with the Anonymous hacking collective have announced plans to launch widespread DDoS strikes against the Israeli military to protest the ongoing detention of Mohammed Al-Qeeq, a Palestinian journalist who has been on hunger strike since November 2015. Al-Qeeq is a reporter for a Saudi news outlet and was arrested at his Ramallah home on 21 November by Israeli police amid claims was linked to Hamas. According to the Independent, he has been in ‘administrative detention’ ever since, which is permitted under Israeli law to detain someone without referring to a judge on the basis they are a threat to the national security. In the week after his detention he went on hunger strike and after roughly 80 days had lost most of his sight, voice and hearing abilities. “We are calling on all citizens of the world to join us in this fight to free an illegally detained man. We are organising many ongoing operations in relation to this issue,” said the hacktivists in a statement posted to PasteBin, who have branded the so-called ‘emergency operation’ as #OpAlQeeq, #OpSaveGaza and #FreeAlQeeq. The statement requested those taking part in the operation to carry out a range of tasks including calling local Israeli embassys, taking to the streets in protest and raising awareness on social media. However, the note also called for major hacking activity against ‘Israeli military forces’ and posted a slew of IP addresses relating to a range of websites including the defence ministry and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). “Since it was the Israeli military forces that arrested and detained Mohammed Al Qeeq, then Israel military forces, his blood is on your hands,” the statement said. “We are calling on all ‘anons’ and hacktivists across the world to focus fire on Israeli military forces. Included [are] all websites associated with the Israeli military. Dump them, load them with viruses, DDoS them, break them, whatever you can do or see fit. Security analysis is already underway on all targets. Targets are listed by priority level. If this man dies in the custody of the Israeli military, Israel you can expect hell.” Anonymous has a long history with hacking Israeli targets. Last year, in a video posted online, the group vowed an ‘electronic holocaust’ against the nation in apparent statement in support of Palestine. “As we did many times, we will take down your servers, government websites, Israeli military websites, and Israeli institutions,” said a masked anonymous individual. “We will erase you from cyberspace in our electronic holocaust.” Meanwhile, in a separate attack in 2012, hackers attacks and shut down a number of websites including the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange after they were threatened by a Saudi hacker. A spokeswoman for the stock exchange confirmed at the time that the site had come under attack, but claimed that trading systems were not affected. Even most recently, following the hack at the Department of Justice that resulted in the loss of thousands of federal credentials, the hacker using the @DotGovs twitter profile who was thought to be behind the incident frequently signed off with the now-familiar phrase: #FreePalestine. Source: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/anonymous-hackers-plan-ddos-campaign-against-israeli-military-protest-mohammed-al-qeeq-detention-1544723

Follow this link:
Anonymous: Hackers plan DDoS campaign against Israeli military to protest Mohammed Al-Qeeq detention

Valentine’s Day Inspires DDoS Attacks Against Online Florists

Security vendor Imperva says it has observed a sharp increase in automated bot traffic directed at florist sites. Cyber criminals have shown a consistent tendency to exploit major news and seasonal events to slip phishing and other malicious attacks past unwary victims. And so it is with this Valentine’s Day as well. Florists apparently have been receiving a lot of attention, of the unwanted variety, from online criminals, security vendor Imperva reported this week. All 34 of the company’s florist customers have experienced a sharp spike in traffic to their sites over the last few days. While some of the traffic is to be expected, considering the rush to order flowers for Valentine’s Day — a lot of it is not. According to Imperva, more than nine in 10 of the florist sites witnessed a sudden surge in bot traffic between February 5 and February 11. In about 23% of the cases, the spike in bot traffic was dramatic enough to cause problems. Contrary to what some might expect, the attack traffic did not appear to be opportunistic in nature. Rather, it looked as if the florists were being individually targeted in denial-of-service campaigns apparently designed to extort money from them. Sponsor video, mouseover for sound One of Imperva’s florist customers reported receiving a ransom note, while another experienced an application-layer denial of service attack, Imperva said. In the case of the latter victim, the company’s Content Distribution Network (CDN) provider interpreted the botnet traffic as regular user sessions, resulting in the site exceeding its contracted cache capacity. This in turn caused the CDN to route the attack traffic through its own origin servers, resulting in their site going down under DDoS traffic. A screenshot published on Imperva’s blog shows that some of the Web application attacks had originated in the United Kingdom, though one appeared to be from Latvia. Somewhat surprisingly, attackers were still going after old vulnerabilities such as Shellshock in an attempt to breach systems belonging to their targets, according to Imperva. Florists can mitigate the threat by monitoring their traffic for unexpected behavior, like heavier than normal traffic spikes, or visits from unfamiliar IP addresses. “Any unusual activity could be ‘dry runs’ by attackers foreshadowing an imminent full-blown attack,” Imperva said. The company also urged florists to monitor Twitter and sites such as Pastebin.com for chatter hinting at a potential attack on their sites. The sudden spike in malicious traffic directed at online florists reflects a common tendency among cyber crooks to escalate malware campaigns and attacks around seasonal events and major news happenings. Earlier this year, mobile network protection vendor Adaptive Mobile reported on a series of picture message spam campaigns on the Kik messenger service that were timed to coincide with seasonal events. The spam messages involved the use of images belonging to well-known brands to try and get recipients to follow links to malicious websites. What was noteworthy was the fact that each campaign was tied to a specific event. For instance, one of the Kik spam campaigns was launched around Halloween, and featured an image message purportedly from Amazon. Another campaign around Thanksgiving involved spam featuring spoofed McDonalds images, while one in the days preceding Cyber Monday featured BestBuy-related spam. While the campaign was not technically very sophisticated, the effort put into creating individual picture messages purporting to be from major brands, suggested a specialist campaign, Adaptive Mobile had noted. Source: http://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/valentines-day-inspires-ddos-attacks-against-online-florists-/d/d-id/1324312

Read the original:
Valentine’s Day Inspires DDoS Attacks Against Online Florists

How CDSL’s CIO is way ahead in the fight against DDoS attack

As the threat of DDoS attack looms large on the enterprise, CDSL’s CIO, Joydeep Dutta, countered it ahead of time with his in-house DDoS protection. For the past few years, India Inc. and its IT teams have been in a constant state of war with malware, hackers, insidious employees and everything that is a threat to their information security. The only strategy applied—and it wasn’t an effective one—was to deal with the after effects of the attack. But one CIO believed in the age old adage: Prevention is better than cure, and secured the most critical applications of the company from DDOS attacks. “Today, not many companies have implemented in-house DDoS protection though it is the ideal way of preventing denial of service attacks. If done only at the network service provider through clean pipes, it doesn’t give full protection,” says Joydeep Dutta, group CTO, Central Depository Services Limited. According to a recent report released by Akamai, India stands in the fourth position for being the origin of non-spoofed DDoS attacks. Of all the attacks, 7.43 percent originated from the country. The project was therefore a high priority for Dutta as the company’s core depository application, electronic voting for company resolution and other critical applications were Web-based. Not wasting any more time, as the threat loomed large, Dutta implemented an in-house DDoS protection and Web Application Firewall for additional security above the capability of traditional network firewalls. “By implementing Web application firewall (WAF), the internet-facing applications which are part of the core applications for most organizations were additionally protected,” he says. Further explaining the project, Dutta says that the in-premises DDOS equipment is the first layer of defense in the on-premise infrastructure. All the other equipment such as ISP routers, firewalls etc; at customer premise, are underneath this. “A set of security modules including Denial-of-service (DoS) protection, Network Behavioral Analysis (NBA), Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), Reputation Engine and Web Application Firewall (WAF), fully safeguard networks, servers, and applications against known and emerging network security threats,” Dutta says. Another novel thing about the project was the built-in security event information management system which collects and analyzes events from all modules to provide enterprise-wide views. CDSL reaped huge benefits from the on-premise DDoS implementation. “It was easy to proactively monitor the security features of these devices to decide necessary actions to be taken,” he says. It was now easy to black-list the vulnerable IP list received regularly from NCIIPC. It was also possible to stop repeated attacks with the help of the device. Thus, Dutta set an example for his peers to follow by securing the organization against the looming security threats. You too get going. Source: http://www.cio.in/case-study/how-cdsl%E2%80%99s-cio-way-ahead-fight-against-ddos-attack

More:
How CDSL’s CIO is way ahead in the fight against DDoS attack

Two Arrested in DDoS Attacks Linked to Online Gambling Site Extortion

Last month’s arrest in Bosnia and Herzegovena of two individuals connected to the cyber-crime group DD4BC have been definitely linked to a series of DDoS extortion attacks over the past 18 months, many of which were targeted at online-gambling firms. PokerStars and Betfair are among the various companies to have been targeted by the extortionists, who typically sought modest and largely-anonymous payments made in Bitcoins in exchange for ceasing the attacks. The DD4BC group, an acronym for DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service attack) For BitCoins, is a loosely organized group of online hackers and thieves who have congregated in some of the Internet’s darker, more anonymous holes. The group’s widespread members share information and online weaponry in their attempts to extract payments from their targets. Failure to provide payoffs by the group’s targeted victims typically results in intermittent and ongoing DDoS attacks, designed to flood the victim’s servers with meaningless online traffic, making normal business impossible. The arrests of the two unidentified individuals was announced by Europol earlier this month, with one of the two individuals described as being a leader of the informal DD4BC group. These initial arrests were part of an international operation dubbed Operation Pleaides. According to the Netherlands-based Europol, which is the official intelligence agency of the European Union, “The action was initiated as part of a global law enforcement response against the criminal organisation. Key members of the organised network were identified in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the UK Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit (MPCCU) which provided vital information to the investigation. Police authorities from Australia, France, Japan, Romania, the USA, Switzerland and INTERPOL supported the coordinated activities. “Operation Pleiades resulted in the arrest of a main target and one more suspect detained,” the Europol statement added. “Multiple property searches were carried out and an extensive amount of evidence was seized,” indicating that more arrests of DD4BC members are likely in the coming weeks and months. The actual “Operation Pleiades” action was initiated in Austria and included Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and the Joint Cybercrime Action Taskforce. The operation slowly unwound the ghostly online tracks of the extortionists by examining “blockchain” entries for Bitcoin transactions related to the DDoS threats, plus other data linked to the group’s activities. Bitcoin-based transactions are anonymous but not perfectly transparent, and can often be traced back to their originators using secondary means. The DD4BC attacks, which appear to have started in early 2014, have targeted several different business and government sectors. Victims range from online gambling firms to Bitcoin exchanges and mining groups, to online banking and payment processors. Even some government institutions have been targeted. Online-poker market leader PokerStars was confirmed as one the DD4BC extortion attempts in April 2015, amid information on the DD4BC attacks assembled by Arbor Networks, the security division of NetScout Systems, Inc. Massachusetts-based NetScout appears to have assisted international authorities in identifying the perpetrators behind the hundreds of DD4BC attacks. In addition to PokerStars, Betfair is almost certainly another of the DD4BC group’s victims. Betfair was also targeted last April in a DDoS attack strong enough to knock both its betting exchange and fixed-odds sportsbook offline. The attack on the “unnamed online casino” (likely Betfair) began in earnest on April 10th, following an initial probing attack launched the day before, along with a demand for payment. The information amassed by Arbor Networks also includes many of the threats e-mailed by DD4BC members to their intended victims. Here’s the e-mail that was sent to the “unnamed” casino company (likely Betfair), immediately following attacks against Stars and online payment processor NETeller: From: DD4BC Team [mailto:dd4bct@gmail.com] Sent: 10 April 2015 02:07 PM To Subject: Re: DDOS ATTACK! Hitting pokerstars.com at the moment. Good luck if you think you can stop what they can’t. But you still have time. On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 3:46 PM, DD4BC Team wrote: Hello, To introduce ourselves first: https://blogs.akamai.com/2014/12/dd4bc-anatomy-of-a-bitcoin-extortion-campaign.html http://bitcoinbountyhunter.com/bitalo.html http://cointelegraph.com/news/113499/notorious-hacker-group-involved-in-excoin-theft-owner-accusesccedk-of-withholding-info Or just google “DD4BC” and you will find more info. Recently, we were DDoS-ing Neteller. You probably know it already. So, it’s your turn! is going under attack unless you pay 20 Bitcoin. Pay to 18NeYaX6GCnibNkwyuGhGLuU2tYzbxvW7z Please note that it will not be easy to mitigate our attack, because our current UDP flood power is 400-500 Gbps, so don’t even bother. Right now we are running small demonstrative attack on your server. Don’t worry, it will stop in 1 hour. It’s just to prove that we are serious. We are aware that you probably don’t have 20 BTC at the moment, so we are giving you 48 hours to get it and pay us. We do not know your exact location, so it’s hard to recommend any Bitcoin exchanger, so use Google. Current price of 1 BTC is about 250 USD. IMPORTANT: You don’t even have to reply. Just pay 20 BTC to 18NeYaX6GCnibNkwyuGhGLuU2tYzbxvW7z – we will know it’s you and you will never hear from us again. We say it because for big companies it’s usually the problem as they don’t want that there is proof that they cooperated. If you need to contact us, feel free to use some free email service. But if you ignore us, and don’t pay within 48 hours, long term attack will start, price to stop will go to 50 BTC and will keep increasing for every hour of attack. ONE MORE TIME: It’s a one-time payment. Pay and you will not hear from us ever again! Variations on the same extortion letter were sent to several other victims; this sample was distinct with the specific mentions of PokerStars and NETeller. In addition to those two firms and the likely inclusion of Betfair, several other online-gambling companies are known to be targets of the group. Those companies include Nitrogen Sports, Malta-based NRR Entertainment Ltd. (including slottyvegas.com and betatcasino.com), Betbtc.com, Redbet.com and others. It is also likely that last July’s DDoS attacks against several New Jersey (U.S.) online sites were the work of DD4BC extortionists. Though those attacks are not referenced in the ASERT compilation, the July attacks are also outside the date range of most of the earlier attacks included in that report. When the New Jersey attacks occurred, NJ Division of Gaming Enforcement director David Rebuck stated this about the perpetrator: “He’s a known actor. He’s done this before.” While DD4BC seems likely to be peeled open by international invetigators, DDoS-based extortion attempts aren’t going to go away. The reason is that the tools needed to launch such attacks are too cheaply and commonly available to would-be cyber-attackers. As a result, the best defense remain vigilance, rapid response… and robust Internet connectivity. According to Wil van Gemert, Europol’s Deputy Director of Operations, “Law enforcement and its partners have to act now to ensure that the cyberspace affecting nearly every part of our daily life is secure against new threats posed by malicious groups. These groups employ aggressive measures to silence the victims with the threat of public exposure and reputation damage. Without enhanced reporting mechanisms law enforcement is missing vital means to protect companies and users from recurring cyber-attacks. Police actions such as Operation Pleiades highlight the importance of incident reporting and information sharing between law enforcement agencies and the targets of DDoS and extortion attacks.” Source: http://www.flushdraw.net/news/misc/two-arrested-in-ddos-attacks-linked-to-online-gambling-site-extortion/

Excerpt from:
Two Arrested in DDoS Attacks Linked to Online Gambling Site Extortion