www.securityfocus.com/columnists/283
Would be curious to hear any RGPers comments on the article.
Specifically, this section....
How bad is online extortion getting? Alan Paller, a speaker at a London
SANS Institute conference, claims that, "Six or seven thousand
organizations are paying online extortion demands ... Every online
gambling site is paying extortion. Hackers use DDoS (distributed
denial-of-service) attacks, using botnets to do it. Then they say, "Pay us
$40,000, or we"ll do it again.""
Whether he"s precisely accurate is not the point; the threat seems real
with regard to online gambling. Talk about low-hanging fruit: web sites
that are on the more sordid side of the Net, raking in lots of cash that
may or may not be totally legal, and requiring an up-and-running web site
or the entire business is at risk. However, it"s not just online gambling
that is facing a rise in cyber-extortion. More legitimate businesses are
increasingly at risk as well.
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