This & That, Ceci et Cela

These days, the new gansters are online; hackers who extort money from firms by threatening of DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks. Ransom emails demanding lots of money in return for not hacking and knocking your company servers offline is becoming a very common problem. DDOS attacks overwhelm servers with customer requests until they are forced offline. Worst part is, many computers (which may include yours) are used to collectively launch parts of the attack, by continously each one sending small packets of data simultaneously resulting in a data flood. This is achieved by infecting the computers with a virus or worm (see related article at BBC).

Its hard to believe any firm would pay up, but some obviously do, however quietly. But if you pay today, won’t you end up having to keep paying every day/weekl/month to every request?