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 serve...