That’s a purpose-built strategy intended as an incentive for the victim temptation to redeem their peace of mind, pay the ransom like it’s a minor nuisance, and move on.Īt the end of the day, DDoS attacks can be monetized in many ways.
Cyber extortionists justify the ransom size with crude calculations of the approximate financial negative impact on the victim’s online business in the event of successful DDoS attack.Īs an unwritten rule, most amounts of money asked for ransom demands are significantly lower than the potential financial loss on the victim’s part. Similar to some instances of ransomware, DDoS attacks may be time limited in order to achieve a maximum psychological effect.
) No one should be taken by surprise that massive DDoS attacks are a prefered weapon of choice, ready to submerge luxurious e-commerce websites during peak traffic times (Diagram 3.) DDoS dealers circulate everywhere online, in underground forums, and even on the public internet.Īdditionally, DDoS attacks are difficult to stop (see Layer 7 DDoS. Depending on how huge the target is, rates for downing websites vary from as little as $5 to $100 per hour. According to Corero’s survey, 38% of the respondents admitted that they had suffered one or more DDoS attacks in the past 12 months. And DDoS service prices are constantly going down, which also contributes to the epidemic proportions of this problem. What is relevant is the realization that a DDoS imposed downtime might cost the targeted company a loss in revenue, clients, and prestige.ĭDoS attacks have become an industry whose sheer power is at call for anyone willing to pay the price. Whether a DDoS is organized by extortionists, unfair competitors, or ‘just for laughs’ wanton troublemakers, is prima facie irrelevant. Non-encrypting ransomware programs typically ‘lock’ the entire PC, terminating all processes that are non-essential to paying the ransom, and can eventually receive an ‘unlock’ code.įinally, a ransom message is displayed on the victim’s screen that demands a particular sum (usually between $100-1,500 for ordinary users) in exchange for a decryption key (usually claimed to be unique), thus completing a vicious cycle of cyber extortion crime done with the help of malware.Īnother extortion tactic, and a very popular trend, is to threat a company’s website or online business with a DDoS attack. The next step is encryption, which converts the targeted files into an unreadable form. Once a victim’s system is accessed, an encryption type of ransomware installs itself and launches a complete hard disc scan, in order to locate documents of interest. Like most malware, ransomware spreads through social engineering techniques and traps sent from mostly unsolicited sources, such as spam, phishing emails with malicious attachments, links to bogus websites, and malvertising. As mentioned before, an extortionist literally takes your data and system hostage. A warning massage usually pops up explaining that an attempt to uninstall or inhibit the ransomware’s functionality in any way would lead to an immediate deal-breaker. Ransomware, as the name suggests, is a type of malware specifically designed to block or encrypt data, followed by a ransom demand. This article will try to explain more about cyber extortion, the actors involved, and most probable repercussions. Or, it can be held brute-force style via DDoS, or as simple as snatching the latest backup and deleting the original version from the owner’s servers. It can be held in a complex manner by replacing the encryption key existing in a database, and holding the new key hostage. Therefore, data can be seen as the new hostage.
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