Organised crime attacks on sites for ransom?

How much does this happen?

[kapow]

I have come across several examples recently of major sites such as a credit card payment gateway being knocked out of action by a DDOSA (Distributed Denial of Service Attack). I have seen an explanation from one such site to say an organised crime gang had targetted them, requiring payment of a ransom to stop the DDOSA. That site said they implemented new systems to prevent the attack.

I am now wondering (perhaps paranoia) when a major ISP goes down (I just heard one is having problems right now) if they are being targetted and just not telling anyone the real reason because it doesn't look good on their security record.

I am wondering just how much organised crime of this nature is going on e.g. from other countries?
How many big companies are fighting attacks or paying a ransom against a threat to bring down their online business?

Anyone know more about this?

[Rosalind]

I am now wondering (perhaps paranoia) when a major ISP goes down (I just heard one is having problems right now) if they are being targetted and just not telling anyone the real reason because it doesn't look good on their security record.

I am wondering just how much organised crime of this nature is going on e.g. from other countries?

If people are being hush-hush about this, and they might feel they have good reasons to keep it quiet, then getting statistics about it is going to be hard. Who would be able to gather them? The police might know about some cases, but not all of them and what percentage go unreported would only be a guess.

[kapow]

I was wondering if WebmasterWorld members know of specific examples.

[Corey Bryant]

The LA times did a story about this about six weeks ago. You might do a search there to see if the topic is still available.

Basically, the people would request $500-$1,000 not to attack someone's website. Most of the time, the people paid. Someone got greedy & wanted $10,000. The guy fought back & eventually won

-Corey

[kapow]

So no one else has any knowledge of this?

[instinct]

If by "organized crime" you meant "zit faced teenager posing as a gangster" then yes it's quite common.

When sites are defaced, blaming it on 'organised crime' looks much better than blaming it on a couple of scrawny nerds.

Makes for a much better story IMHO.

;-)

[kapow]

I mean anyone carrying out actual harm to major websites e.g. payment gateways, ISPs etc, and asking for a ransom.