Million Dollar Homepage: Blackmail - DDoS ATTACK

[companyone]

Hey,

Blackmailers target $1m website

Alex Tew gained unwanted attention from net attacks
The site of a UK student who had the idea of selling pixels as advertising space has been hit by a web attack.

Alex Tew, 21, hit the headlines at the start of the year when he revealed his Million Dollar Homepage had made him a million dollars in four months.

But the publicity brought the unwanted attention of extortionists who knocked the site over with a massive denial-of-service attack.

Following a week of downtime, the website is now back online.

Police alerted

Mr Tew's encounter with the net criminals began on 7 January when he received an e-mail threatening to bombard the site with data unless he paid a ransom of $5,000 (£2,800).


I haven't replied to any of them as I don't want to give them the satisfaction and I certainly don't intend to pay them any money
Alex Tew
He did not respond and the 10 January deadline passed without incident. But the following day the site went down, and has only been up intermittently since then.

A series of other e-mails, upping the ransom to $50,000 (£28,000), followed.

"I haven't replied to any of them as I don't want to give them the satisfaction and I certainly don't intend to pay them any money," Mr Tew told the BBC News website.

Both the FBI and the Hi-Tech Crime Unit of the Wiltshire Constabulary have been notified about the problem.

"Their instinct is that this attack originates in Russia although it is not possible to track the e-mail back to its source," said Mr Tew.

"There is not much more that they can do," he added.

Instead, Mr Tew's web hosting firm Sitelutions worked to solve the problem, initially coming up with a hardware solution.

It did not work because of the size of the attack.

Currently traffic to Mr Tew's website is being filtered via a US-based firm DDoSprotection.com - experts in dealing with such attacks - and that solution appears to be working.

The site is back online, albeit a little slow for visitors.

Preventing denial-of-service attacks can be a costly business but, ever the entrepreneur, Mr Tew is hopeful he can do a deal with his new partner - offering them free ad space in return for them keeping his site up and running.

Zombie PCs

It has become common practice for extortionists to target net firms and threaten to cripple their websites with deluges of data unless they pay a ransom.


DDoS ATTACK EXPLAINED
DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service attack
Malicious hacker uses virus to hijack numerous computers
On command these zombie computers flood the targeted website with useless data
The target's internet servers are overwhelmed by junk data
Customers have trouble using the targeted website
Targeted website can be slow or inaccessible for days
Fighting DoS attacks is laborious and costly
Because the zombies are distributed across the internet, finding the attacker is difficult

So-called Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks overwhelm servers with customer requests until they are forced offline.

Computers are innocently recruited from all over the world to take part in the attack, each sending only a small part of the entire data flood.

The recruiting of machines to take part in attacks is typically done by infecting them with a virus or worm.

The net address of compromised machines - dubbed zombies or bots - is sent back to the criminal, who will use it to launch a DDoS.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4621158.stm


Dan

 

[lukeeales]

Is this just more newsmongering by Tew?

 

[VisualDigits]

he's promoting his site this way. how uncool :/

 

[zachbb]

it does promote the site but not very well... it gives a feeling of insecurity, and no ones wants to be associated with that

 

[GT Web]

lol, his site gets attacked and you are upset with him?

 

[BLazeD]

lol, his site gets attacked and you are upset with him?

I think thats its more that nobody trusts him.

 

[GT Web]

Why?

Because he had an ingenious idea?
Because he sold the remaining pixels on Ebay, something which was in no way immoral or dishonest?
Because he made a ton of money?

 

[paulc]

I think people who attack Alex Tew, slate him for his idea, and generally say bad things about him, are basically jealous that he made a lot of money, fame and everything else he has made out of it, in no time at all.

Good on the lad, we all wish we could have thought of something as simple as that, but we never, let's leave him to his success and get on with our own lifes and projects.

 

[Tia Wood]

I think people who attack Alex Tew, slate him for his idea, and generally say bad things about him, are basically jealous that he made a lot of money, fame and everything else he has made out of it, in no time at all.

I feel the same way. He basically made money off of nothing. I think alot of people are jealous because others struggle to do the same everyday. but all this guy did was set up an advertising idea.

 

[BLazeD]

Why?


Because he sold the remaining pixels on Ebay, something which was in no way immoral or dishonest?

That's where we disagree. I have nothing against his idea or all the money he made.

 

[gdubz]

I think that guy's smart and really lucky, im sure all this will just bring him more press and more visitors, I wish i wouldve bought space on his site

 

[namewaiter]

yea it's hitting the us news, and if he so called faked this, then if he truly contacted the FBI, there will be hell to pay for false claims ... i doubt he faked this..

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/01/19/student.homepage.hack.ap/index.html

 

[Prosperous]

Rumor has it that the MillionDollarPenisPumps guy -eh, I mean 'MillionDollarWeightLoss'- winner guy is threatening to sue Alex for the fact that his $38,100 worth of last famous last pixels were not up fast enough (due to the DDoS) after he had wired him his payment... Oh dear.

 

[paulc]

why how long is he claiming Alex took to put it up?

 

[Prosperous]

5 to 6 days.

 

[gmac17]

5 to 6 days? that is horrible.

 

[Prosperous]

Yeah, and it indeed took that long, but this was of course because of the DDoS.