Bitcoin Extortionists Plaguing Companies with DDoS Attacks

Gone are the days when one needed to go through blood and sweat for robbing someone off-guard; these days, a simple DDoS attack can do it. Bonny and Clyde, sorry for your loss!

Reports are emerging of an online extortionist group DD4BC, which is threatening to launch online attacks against some mid-to-large Scandinavian companies. The notorious pack of larcenists reportedly email their targets and ask them a 40 Bitcoin ransom to avoid serious consequences — a 1-hour DDoS attack is the best we heard. An excerpt from their letter as follows:

“Right now we are running a small demonstrative attack on 1 of your IPs. Don’t worry, it will not be hard, since we do not want to crash your server at this moment, and will stop in 60 minutes. It’s just to prove that we are serious. We are aware that you probably don’t have 40 BTC at the moment, so we are giving you 24 hours to get BTC and pay us.”

As reported by Heimdal Security, a Denmark-based online security provider, the aforementioned group typically starts with a nominal attack — on layer 3-4 of the network on a scale between 10-20 GBps. However to break the advanced securities, it initiates a “loop back attack with post/per requests.”

“If a company fails to meet their requests, and if that company doesn’t migrate this attack through various anti-DDoS services, the group will typically move on after 24 hours of a sustained attack,” Heimdal Security informed. “But you shouldn’t count on this pattern to manage your cyber security tactics.”

History of DD4BC Attacks

It is indeed not the first time DD4BC has attacked companies for Bitcoin ransoms. The thugs have previously poisoned the organizations in Switzerland, Australian and New Zealand. The group was also blamed to initiate a DDoS attack on Bitcoin exchange and wallet company Bitalo. It had also targeted BitQuick, Expresscoin, and CoinTelegraph in past.