Topic: [2015-12-07] Cyber Extortion, DDoS-For-Bitcoin Campaigns Rise (Read 270 times)

Cyber Extortion, DDoS-For-Bitcoin Campaigns Rise '

Now that the model is proven, more cyber-extortionists are entering the scene, stealing their predecessors' ideas and even their names.

Whether it be via DDoS, doxing threats, or ransomware, attackers extorting victims for cash via electronic means is growing, and Bitcoin may be partly to blame for the increase, according to researchers at Recorded Future.

"Bitcoin attracted more miscreants to the space," says Tyler Bradshaw, solutions engineer for Recorded Future. Because it's a relatively new, the unregulated currency allows extortionists to accept payments anonymously.

While ransomware operators are generally indiscriminate about targets, go after individuals, and request small ransoms of 1 to 2 BTC (currently approximately $349 to $698), DDoS extortionists take the opposite approach.

Last year, the threat group DD4BC (short for "DDoS for Bitcoin") first emerged. DD4BC's modus operandi was to threaten a company with a major distributed denial of service -- on the magnitude of 400-500 Gbps -- prove it could compromise the network by carrying out a low-level warning attack of roughly 10-20 Gbps, and demand a payment to prevent a large-scale DDoS. According to Recorded Future, DD4BC has attacked over 140 companies in this way.

According to a report by researchers at Akamai’s Prolexic Security Engineering and Research Team (PLXsert) released in September, the group first targeted online gaming and online currency exchanges -- which would be reluctant to request help from law enforcement. They then shifted attention to financial services companies, tweaking the attack to include a threat of publicly embarrasing the company by revealing, via social media, the company had been DDoSed.

DD4BC's ransom demands ranged from 10 BTC to as much as 200 BTC (currently $3,940 to $78,788), often starting low and increasing the price the longer the victim failed to pay up.

DD4BC did not actually seem to be capable of carrying out the 400-500 Gbps-scale attack they threatened. The worst Akamai detected was 56 Gbps. Yet, the threats and warning attacks were enough to convince targets to pay the ransom.

As Akamai PLXsert wrote in its September report:

http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/cyber-extortion-ddos-for-bitcoin-campaigns-rise--/d/d-id/1323448