Posted on 07/30/2015 3:44:28 PM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Financial companies are facing extortion threats from hackers who threaten to knock their websites offline unless firms pay tens of thousands of dollars, an FBI agent told MarketWatch Thursday.
More than 100 companies, including targets from big banks to brokerages in the financial sector, have received distributed denial of service threats since about April, says Richard Jacobs, assistant special agency in charge of the cyber branch at the FBI’s New York office. With these types of attacks, known as DDoS, criminals jam websites by flooding them with useless traffic.
The ransom requests typically run in the tens of thousands of dollars and in some cases, the companies have paid up, Jacobs said. If firms have already traced the ultimatums to identify likely culprits, they can determine whether those criminals have historically followed through with threats or backed off if a target doesn’t pay up. In some cases, when companies fork over cash, they end up facing further attacks because they proved they’re willing to engage.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
It appears the FBI and the Courts don’t like the competition!
hummm maybe they should focus on the donors in government to planned parenthood....another way to shut down the ‘butchers’.....
At the bank where I used to work, we had 1000 webservers connected to 1000 appservers. Each webserver was supposed to be able to handle 2000 active users at once. DDOS attackers were pretty unsuccessful; you’d really need a massive attack to shut that sort of web infrastructure down.
Humm. How about this. Presumably most people first go to the bank and then start using the site. Suppose they gave each user a unique key. The user goes home, connects, uses his one time key and gains access. Anybody who comes to the site without the proper access protocol is ignored. Access from another computer or a mobile would be handled differently.
Commercial information would be available at another site that did not have any account access and would not be used by the banks clients. Who cares if that one gets shut down.
For accessing a classified site I was given a tiny key fob that displayed a satellite controlled code. The code changed about every minute. To access the site I had to enter the code. If it changed while I was entering it, I had to enter the new code. I don’t know how many of us had this but I was told the system could handle thousands of users. This device was pretty cheap. So give one to each depositor. You can’t hit this site with denial of service as you don’t even get near it until after you’re okayed as a valid user.
HA!
“It appears the FBI and the Courts don’t like the competition!”
That’s for sure.
It also appears things could all fall apart pretty fast.
It’s also possible the Gov. is setting up hackers to be the fall guy.
“It’s also possible the Gov. is setting up hackers to be the fall guy.”
Being severely Jaded and Cynical, that was my thought also
“Being severely Jaded and Cynical, that was my thought also”
It’s hard not to be that way these days.
Yeah. Big deal. They threatened to shut me down if I didn’t pay and I told them they c
Well played sir!
We gave these where I work. You have your normal sign on ID and password then you have to take the key fob and enter the number.
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