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CastleCops.com Hit With Reputation-Based Attacks
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Sep 18, 2007 12:39 PM
from the its-a-dirty-web-out-there dept.
from the its-a-dirty-web-out-there dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The all-volunteer based online fraud fighting group CastleCops.com is currently the target of ongoing reputation-based attacks in which criminals use phished PayPal accounts to donate thousands of dollars to CastleCops from dozens of victims. This attack appears to be in response to a recent series of failed denial-of-service attacks against the CastleCops, Web site. From the story: 'A few donations were for as little as $1, while other fake donations ranged as high as $2,800. To the victims of the stolen PayPal accounts, it looks as if CastleCops is the one stealing their money, when in reality, it's the attackers. Also, the fraudulent activity seeks to ruin their relationship with PayPal.' In a comment left on Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog, CastleCops co-founder Paul Laudanksi says while the group's site remains under a heavy DDoS attack, it is currently down due to a hardware failure, not the attack itself."
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Submission: CastleCops.com Hit With Reputation-Based Attacks by Anonymous Coward
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CastleCops Anti-Malware Site Closes Down 68 comments
Fortran IV writes "Volunteer-powered anti-malware site CastleCops appears to have closed shop. As of Tuesday, December 23, the CastleCops home page notes: 'You have arrived at the CastleCops website, which is currently offline. . . . Unfortunately, all things come to an end.' It was reported back in June that Paul Laudanski, founder of CastleCops and its parent Computer Cops LLC, was taking a full-time job with Microsoft and was 'looking for new management' for CastleCops. The site has also long had problems with funding and with hostile action from spammers. The actual shutdown seems to have taken the security community by surprise; as late as Tuesday evening Brian Krebs was still recommending CastleCops on his Security Fix blog."
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You'd think... (Score:4, Interesting)
With CastleCops.com as a honeypot, ISPs could be contacted to the origin of the DDoS attacks, PayPal could do some investigating of their own as to the IP origins of donations and do something about this stuff.
Fer Bob's sakes, this isn't 2001 anymore, when are these companies and perhaps goverment going to make some strides in shutting down bots and zombies?
Not until a law is passed. (Score:3, Insightful)
The ISP's are NOT going to spend the money UNLESS they're facing larger fines if they do not do so.
Not to mention that the ISP's usually don't hire the best and brightest out there. I don't believe they could tell the difference between the slashdot effect and a DDoS. How many of the people here would be happy to find out that their they've been cut off beca
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Of course, there is a profit to be made in people upping their connection speeds because their pwnd computer is spewing garbage.
But, if I were offered a service where I could count on less of this crap clogging up my tubes, I'd take it.
Re:Not until a law is passed. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, come on. You just pulled that statistic out of your ass.
Parent
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Back when I was at that call center (it was Adelphia owned back then) Adelphia had an internal group call the Internet Policy Enforcement Team (IPET). They would co
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To get bot/zombie nets shutdown would require MASSIVE multi-National support of Government's, TELCO's, ISP's, and politicians. The Gov's are too busy with the future of oil for that to every happen. As far as the Telco's are concerned, they're too busy tracking your web usage and shoving money in their back pocket. ISP's are just trying to stay in the market, much less effectively clamp down on traffic coming from their users. As for Policitian's, the software and hardware compan
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kettle pot black?
Help Yourself. (Score:2)
when are these companies and perhaps goverment going to make some strides in shutting down bots and zombies?
It's up to you. Botnets allow this kind of activity and there really is no way to trace the communications back to the source without reverting to POTS. Even then, those with enough power and skill can go undetected. OS diversification will help. Elimination of the weaker OS will do more. You can demand your freedom, that the government quit subsidizing non free software and change the way you
How did we get here? (Score:4, Interesting)
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The russian mafia has been in control of the country since the fall of the soviet union. The FSB is made up of former KGB and mafia officers.
These gangs operate with complete impunity.
The answer to these problems is physically denying network access to these countries. Turn off their Internet access.
This creates two problems: Let's see how long russia can go without the Internet, and let's
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Also Reagan and many true conservatives refused to back down from the soviet union and neither will the current white house. However a second cold war is coming and you are 100% correct that Putin doesn't give a shit. Probably because the mobfia is more organized than his own security fo
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It's much harder to get oil out of Russia. Plus Muslims and Arabs are much easier to target than some nebulous Russian Gangs. And as the final straw, it's a lot easier to scare joe sixpack that some ebil terrorist is going to blow up his minivan, than some Russian Gang is going to DDoS his non-existant website.
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In Soviet Russia.... (Score:5, Funny)
What's wrong with people? (Score:4, Insightful)
And while they're at it, they could stop sporging sci.crypt and other groups. That'd be nice.
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I'm sure they sleep fine already. On a nice comfy expensive bed.
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Nope. Thanks to our 24/7 instant news society, you just hear about things a lot more often
Humans will always prey on one another. The only thing that varies is the degree
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Predators always tend to be outnumbered 100 to 1 by prey... which is why the predator becomes a consummate hunter and picks on the weak elements of the herd. No different on the Internet. The spammers and phishers are probably outnumbered 100,000 to 1, but as long as the continue to prey on the weak elements of society (read: the tech un-savvy), they will continue to prosper and flourish. They only way to make it harder for them is to change the environment they are operating in... or hunt them down.
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See also:
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Modern-day Joe Job (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Modern-day Joe Job (Score:5, Informative)
The sad thing is, if someone really wants to cause hell for another it's not all that hard. 99% of net users are ignorant to how trustworthy things like a "from" address are. In fact, we had to joe-job [privately] one irate poster who kept assuming joe-jobs were impossible with email. So my brother and I sent him emails with his name and address on them. (this was all in private, not public). In the end he told us to leave him alone (and we did) and he never really conceded the point.
People are dumb. This just proves they're also mean.
Which is why I study music instead now. The Internet is just too much of a waste.
Parent
Re:Modern-day Joe Job (Score:4, Insightful)
Which just goes to show what psychologists have known for years: the mob is fickle and easily incited. All you have to do is chant "child porn" and point a finger and the dogs are all over you. What hurts with something like that is that information on the Internet has permanence unlike anything else, which mans even if you clear up a misconception, misunderstanding, or outright fraud, the original information continues to exist and people will still believe. To paraphrase, "a lie repeated often enough starts to sound like the truth."
Parent
It's like raaaiiiiiiiiaaaain (Score:2)
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PayPal can understand this, act accordingly (Score:2)
paypal under ebay is not stupid as the old paypal to not understand the importance of this, and not defend the enemy of its enemy.
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I seriously have no idea what this means. Try dropping out a few "nots" and rephrase. Is the new or old paypal more stupid? They both seem idiotic to me.
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While you were sleeping (Score:3, Insightful)
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Funny. What makes you think that they have that capability? Even when the traffic is distinct enough to filter, I'd think inspecting it all would take quite a lot more hardware than they're used to using...
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In other news (Score:1)
The Republican Party made a generous donation to the Black Panthers.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakers_(movie) [wikipedia.org]
Add a verify by phone option to paypal (Score:1)
Thanks to the fraudsters (Score:1)
DDos (Score:1)
Doesn't this always happen when a site is mentioned on Slashdot?
Re:Hobby or business? (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for your very deep and wonderful insight!
Obviously you have found the core of all their problems was that they obviously don't take what they are doing seriously, and because of that, the groups they are fighting against use sneaky tactics through third party companies to enact harm upon them.
Because that makes sense and is something they obviously could have stopped if they had only "treated it more like a business", whatever that means. No one knows, because you didn't even elaborate.
[/sarcasm]
Parent
Re:Hobby or business? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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In that regard they are treating it exactly like a business, maximum profit for least work. Not a good business, but a profitable one none the less.
However the GP said that castlecops was the one treating it not like a business. Still not sure what he meant.
No one questioned paypal's buffoonery
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Re:It's ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed -- to a point. Phishing is like the Internet equivalent of mugging, in that your money is taken involuntarily, but the fact is, you click the link that enables the phisher to get your cash. People have to be accountable for their own actions. I would give them full refunds, but then if I was PayPal I would flag their accounts and scrutinize every transaction from there on out for at least a year to make sure they didn't repeat the mistake. Maybe after their payments continue to be delayed by the extra processing, the users will think twice before clicking any link. And if they don't, and get bagged again, automatically shut down their account.
Parent
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I'm pretty savvy when it comes to phishing, I always hover over questionable links to see where the HTML leads to, and some of the phishing e-mails I get purporting to be PayPal are
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It would also annoy sellers a lot. If you can take credit cards, why would you bother taking PayPal when there's a chance you get the headache of having to hold stock for a customer while payment is approved. Paypal doesn't have enough of the market compared to credit cards in ecommerce to pull tricks like that.