DDoS Attacks: Holding Websites Ransom

Earlier this month, Feedly was attacked with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The criminals demanded a $300 payment to stop the attack. Feedly refused and Feedly faced three DDoS attacks over several days. DDoS attacks have surged in 2014, including attacks on companies like Evernote, Vimeo, Basecamp, Meetup and more. It appears that many companies, like Feedly, have chosen to refuse ransom.

Feedly took their attack directly to the public by posting on their blog the following entry:

Criminals are attacking feedly with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop. We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can.

Gene Marks at Forbes responded to feedly’s openness with praises. “Feedly’s transparency and bitter response to its attackers kept me informed (and cheering),” writes Marks.  He continues, “Their blog read like a war diary. Granted, the updates were few and far between but I get that – they’re working on it, what more is there to say? I also appreciate that they didn’t insult my intelligence by making specific predictions as to when they’d be up and running – how could anyone know that?”

He also considers the speed of feedly’s recovery as a great sign for cloud computing. “Feedly’s experience only further proves that your network’s security is vastly inferior to that of a good, cloud based service,” writes Marks. “If you were attacked by a ransomware how would you respond?” Marks response is a good reminder to consider your recover plan in case of attack.

Who is launching these attacks? According to Brian Krebs, many of these attacks are run by teenagers proving how “cool” they are by knocking sites offline. “My site appears to have been attacked this week by a 15-year-old boy from Illinois who calls himself “Mr. Booter Master” online,” writes Krebs.

VentureBeat traced the 10 top source countries for DDoS attacks, and these are their results:

• India (9.59 percent)
• China (9.2 percent)
• Iran (7.99 percent)
• Indonesia (4.29 percent)
• U.S. (4.26 percent)
• Thailand (4.20 percent)
• Turkey (3.89 percent)
• Russia (3.45 percent)
• Vietnam (2.88 percent)
• Peru (2.62 percent)

VentureBeat’s research suggests a 240 percent jump in DDoS attacks over the past year. This is partly because of the availability of new techniques that can generate high traffic volumes. As cybercriminals adapt to new technologies businesses will have to adapt as well.

The above map tracks daily digital attacks see http://www.digitalattackmap.com/ for more information.

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