I have not updated my blog in forever. I apologize to those who used to visit it quite frequently. I am currently rebuilding it would like to have the new version up next month (July 2008) with lots of fresh content.

Use My Content

  • You are free to use my content as long as you link back to this site and follow the rules of my Creative Commons License.
  • Creative Commons License

My Delicious Account

Spam Filters The Fuel Behind Cyber Extortion

Posted On: April 25th, 2007 | Published Under: Web Development

The internet has been a calm anonymous place to relax and work. I know when I hop on I’m not going to get kicked in the face or have my car stolen. Outside of common scams, sex crimes, and investor fraud; the internet has not experienced traditional baseball bat to the knees style crime.

Those days are over.

With possibly tens of millions computers under the “control” of a large group of underground coders, SPAM email has been their longtime activity of choice. In the process it has netted them tens of millions of dollars and caused billions of dollars in damage.

What happens though when email services like Gmail become more popular and their spam filters become more intelligent because of it?

What happens when Yahoo fully implements DomainKeys and knocks out 50-60% of all SPAM immediately for its users?

What happens when filters, toolbars, and general knowledge of SPAM email products and websites become more widely distributed to the internet user masses?

Lastly, now that CAN-SPAM laws make it just as illegal to send SPAM emails as it is to extort money out of people and carries similar prison sentences, whats holding back the SPAM networks from DOS attacks?

Welcome to the new world of hostage websites.

Using DOS (denial of service) attacks bot network controllers are able to literally cut off all traffic to a server, thus preventing anyone from accessing the website. In return for releasing your site from their clutches they will normally extort $10-15,000 out of you. Of course this doesn’t insure that the hacker actually releases his control over your site, it simply means he/she leaves you alone until another day.

The money in the SPAM industry is going down slowly due to saturation and over-exposure to the same products again and again. The cash found in extortion however appears to be going up due to the increased number of DoS attacks on small and medium businesses. With that said, I can’t be the only person who doesn’t see what is going to happen next.

Some of these bot networks are so large and spread out, blocking them or protecting against them is literally impossible for any site who can’t afford a network of servers. Some previous Distrbuted DoS attacks have produced over 600,000 pages per second of traffic. Unless your website is spread across 50 servers with Gigabit connections, 10 Cisco routers, and connected into its own dedicated OC24 connection, your site is dead in the water.

These attacks can last as long as the bot network owner wants. He can sit back, relax, drink some Starbucks, and come back in a week to check his Inbox for your Western Union wire transfer.

Only sites like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and other top tier websites are actually safe. There isn’t a bot network on the planet that can take down Google due to the fact that they are spread across tens of thousands of servers worldwide with dozens of DNS fail over triggers ready to go at any second to another set of thousands of servers. Not to mention many of them own or rent their own fiber and their data centers have at least OC48 connections.

The extortion will be aimed at smaller companies, mom and pop online stores, and media serving companies. Where ever the impact will be felt the greatest and impact these business owner’s bottom line the most, you will find these DOS attackers waiting in the dark.

These bot networks will continue to grow, their power becomes greater each week, and they will soon start to target sites in the US and abroad more often.  As for solutions to this issue, CERT and many other organizations are trying their best to cope. You have to ask though:

How do you stop these bot networks when you the reader (among tens of millions of others) may be on of the infected computers?

I would love to hear some comments about this. *Also, I’m not trying to point out the existance of DOS attack bot networks, they have existed for a long time. I’m trying to point out that, once spam is no longer a valuable revenue stream, extortion will grow exponentially. *

Popularity: 33% [?]

Tell Everyone About This: Digg | Reddit | Del.icio.us

One Response to “Spam Filters The Fuel Behind Cyber Extortion”

  1. Opre Mark’s » The internet hasn’t had baseball bat to the knees style crime. Now it does. Says:

    […] read more | digg story […]

Leave a Reply