Online extortion works

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Online extortion is quietly affecting thousands of businesses, for a very simple reason: it works. The big question then becomes, how will you and your company decide to respond? Many of us have seen Kenneth Branagh's excellent 1989 motion picture adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry V, and the general impression that most people take away is that the King is overall a good, valiant leader. Interestingly, though, Branagh left out an important scene in his film, one that the 1944 version starring Laurence Olivier included. In Act III, Scene 3, Henry and his men are before the gates of the beseiged French city of Harfleur, and Henry explains to the Governor and the listening citizens of Harfleur what will happen if they do not surrender to the English forces.

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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: websites 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.

For example, Kentucky businessman Jay Broder received an email demanding $10,000; when he refused to pay, his company's website was down for a week, the victim of a DDoS. At first, Broder simply ignored the email, believing it to be spam. He learned his lesson when the attack began, and it took a switch to a new IP address and a new web host to solve his problem. Or maybe it's not solved. He could get another email. Soon.

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