DDoS Attack Hits Kickass Torrents, DNS Servers Crippled

Site goes down for most of the day on January 16

Kickass Torrents, the Internet's biggest torrent portal has suffered downtime yesterday after an unknown attacker has pummeled the site with a DDoS attack.

According to a statement given by the site's administrators to TorrentFreak, a blog dedicated to piracy news, the attack was aimed at the website's DNS servers.

Because of this, both the main domain and the plethora of official site proxies were down as well.

The brunt of the attack was registered yesterday, January 16, and had the site taken offline for almost all day. Previously, during the week, the site was also hit by smaller DDoS attacks.

Everything seems to be up and running now, but expect future attacks as well.

The attack fits the pattern of a DDoS extortion campaign, when small attacks are launched at first, and then a bigger one to force victims into paying the DDoS ransom.

Earlier this week, Europol announced the capture of the famed DD4BC DDoS extortion group in Bosnia and Herzegovina. DD4BC is the first group known to launch DDoS attacks and then ask for payments in Bitcoin.

The group's actions have been copied by many other DDoSing outfits, and most DDoS attacks nowadays are launched for this reason.

Kickass Torrents is one of Alexa's top 100 sites on the Internet, meaning it's an attractive target for DDoSing groups, thanks to its huge advertising revenue.

Source: http://ift.tt/1U4c3qz

via DDoS Attacks