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Security

Fighting Online Extortion 116

Posted by CmdrTaco from the more-common-than-we-think dept.
prostoalex writes "Information Week talks about those mornings, when an owner of an online business receives an e-mail message with his customer accounts and other personal information quoted, and extortionist asking for certain amount of money to be transferred to a foreign bank. Although 70% of the businesses surveyed for the article claim they never had to deal with extortion on the Internet, the article claims those small businesses who think they are not interesting for extortionists, are in for a surprise."
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Fighting Online Extortion More

Fighting Online Extortion

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  • Sounds like a business opportunity. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lecithin ( 745575 ) * on Sunday September 19, 2004 @10:56AM (#10290908)
    Seems to me that a person could make a buck advertising and selling security services with this niche alone.

    Who would a person call if they had some problems like this?

    • Re:Sounds like a business opportunity. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Nakkel ( 748351 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:06AM (#10290960)
      Who would a person call if they had some problems like this?

      Ghostbusters?
    • Call? Police, and hope you get someone on the phone who knows how to handle a mouse. And probably a private IT security company to get better results and safety.

    • Re:Sounds like a business opportunity. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:18AM (#10291016) Homepage
      Who would a person call if they had some problems like this?

      In the US? The FBI I think; it's wire fraud which is a very serious offence and the foreign bank account angle takes it out of the jurisdiction of local/state police. I've been peripherally involved with something like this in the UK where the National High Tech Crime Unit got involved; the important things are not to panic and to contact the authorities immediately so they can do their thing.

      In my instance, the NHTCU took care of contacting the banks responsible for the various credit cards and everything, or at least passed the information along to the relevent organisation(s). I gather most of the banks simply issued a new credit card without making a fuss or the customer aware of the real reason for that matter. And yes, the perps got busted - or more accurately got stung due to the combination of information recovered from the compromised box and a few "creative" emails written by the NHTCU.

    • Seems to me that a person could make a buck advertising and selling security services with this niche alone.

      I was thinking of a high-security service that stored most of the customer information. The only customer information on the e-store's server would be a customer number, and perhaps first name to serve as a greeting. The interface between the two servers would not allow open-ended queries. Only the type of queries needed would be allowed, which usually would only be verification that a customer is
    • No kidding! Have you ever noticed how articles about "new IT security threats" ALWAYS come with an infomercial buried in them somewhere. In this case-
      Rather than pay off the attackers, the company called on its technical forces to build a defense and enlisted the help of Internet security-services provider Prolexic Technologies Inc.
      Hmmm, but of course Prolexic Technologies Inc. has nothing to do with the publication of this article (ahem...)

  • I worry for my employer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 19, 2004 @10:58AM (#10290923)
    Posted anonymously for obvious reasons...

    My employer has a large site done in PHP that grew over the years, and is rife with opportunities for SQL injection.

    They know what needs to change, and there is a plan to get from here to there over the next year, including a new in-house white-box security testing team. In the mean time, we are standing around with our pants down.

    The thing that keeps me awake nights is: What happens if some disgruntled ex-employee (there are two floating around out there) decides to seek vengeance against us by targetting us in an extortion scheme?

    • The thing that keeps me awake nights is: What happens if some disgruntled ex-employee (there are two floating around out there) decides to seek vengeance against us by targetting us in an extortion scheme?
      That one is easy to fix. Management only needs to make sure that there are no ex-disgruntled employees...
    • I'm sure the first thing the authorities (or anybody even) would do is check out who has the highest motive for starting an extortion scheme like that. If it's well known that these 2 people have issues with the company, the first thing any competent investigator would do is question them first. This is not to say that the damage wouldn't have already been done at this point, but it should at least be some comfort that they would most likely be caught and made an example of.

    • They know what needs to change, and there is a plan to get from here to there over the next year, including a new in-house white-box security testing team. In the mean time, we are standing around with our pants down.

      The thing that keeps me awake nights is: What happens if some disgruntled ex-employee (there are two floating around out there) decides to seek vengeance against us by targetting us in an extortion scheme?

      The only "quick fix" in that scenario is to implement some kind of screening of incomin

      • While it's a good idea to have a firewall block malformed packets, etc., this is pretty close to useless in defending from disgruntled ex-employees. Most security violations take place from inside the firewall, because the disgruntled ex-employees know passwords, have friends back in the company, etc. And most attacks that do come from outside the company aren't at the level of malformed packets -- they're application-level vulnerabilities, or simply people that try default passwords, etc.

        It's not a bad id

    • Sarbanes-Oxley? (Score:3, Informative)

      by hughk ( 248126 )
      If you are a public corporation, then Sarbanes-Oxley applies. This mandates disclosure of any issues that may affect share price. Any time bombs waiting to go off, i.e., major systems problems, that are known about must be disclosed. If senior management is aware of a serious problem that they do not disclose, then they can be in serious trouble.
    • The thing that keeps me awake nights is: What happens if some disgruntled ex-employee (there are two floating around out there) decides to seek vengeance against us by targetting us in an extortion scheme?

      Well, if it is in fact a disgruntled ex-employee (as some many modern cyber attacks are), then don't worry about it: just accuse one, and you have a 50% chance of hitting the right one! Seriously, though, you should set up a temporary fix so you don't have to worry about it- at least until you can perma

  • So who are the extortionists? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mindaktiviti ( 630001 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:00AM (#10290931)
    "WagerWeb was knocked offline for about a day, says Dan Johnson, senior VP and senior oddsmaker at the site. Rather than pay off the attackers, the company called on its technical forces to build a defense and enlisted the help of Internet security-services provider Prolexic Technologies Inc. The vendor's services, at about $100,000 a year, aren't cheap. But, "I'd rather pay the $100,000 than pay the extortionists," Johnson says. The gamble paid off. "As soon as we got the service running, the attack stopped," technology manager Burns says."

    THAT is really freaky.

    • Re:So who are the extortionists? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:21AM (#10291034) Homepage Journal
      Well, depending on the vendor's services I might call that a pretty unreasonable price. On the other hand, a large company might spend a lot more than that on hardware, software, audits, staff, etc. All to prevent such extortion...

      --anecdote time--
      If you're a small business, $100,000 might not be feasible. But then again, most small businesses won't need that kind of service. I've seen far too many sites ready to be discovered and attacked. One of my selling methods when I'm talking to a potential client is to visit their existing site and point out security holes. In one instance, I did a real quick SQL injection method to gain access to the "secure client login" area. Right in front of the client, we're staring at their largest client's account details.

      "Can you fix it for me?"
      --end anecdote--

      I generally charge $75/hour; that's 1,333 hours and 20 minutes of work before they'd pay $100k. Even with failover servers, load distributing, etc., getting out of the extortionists' crosshairs doesn't have to be so expensive.
      • Mmm, you know probably better than me, but having a secure server (one without security holes either in the OS or in the app) is the easy part (yes, I know it is hard).

        Being able to resist to a DDOS seems to me the hard part! That's why they paid 100k in the article..
      • Yeah, but most companies are run by idiots. Seriously. They think nothing of dropping $100,000 on ISO9660 consultants, $100,000 on "efficiency experts", etc, etc.

        When your revenue is several tens of million a year (for a mid sized company), 100,000 looks cheap, even if it is something that could be handled a lot cheaper.

        One thing I've noticed, people are resistant to change generally. But if that change comes from highly overpaid consultants, people are more willing to change the way they do things. O
      • But you are undercharging. It's easy for you, but the guy is obviously willing to pay double what you are asking for.
      • We had a team come in to examine our NOC. The first thing they wanted when they came in was valid IPs and subnet listings. In front of my boss, I told them to get stuffed. If they want to do a test, let them come. But I'm not giving them any help at all.

        In any event, they charged a lot and found little. In the outbrief, they made even the smallest problems seem huge. I guess they may have had a point.

        IMHO, the team that came to see us charged a lot and did not really acomplish anything.

    • Re:So who are the extortionists? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think the followup posts to this are missing the point. What's freaky is that the attack stopped as soon as he paid Prolexic $100,000 a year. Makes one wonder how he heard about Prolexic.

  • Certainly different from legal forms of extortion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The I Shing ( 700142 ) * on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:00AM (#10290932) Journal
    A legal extortionist, say, a patent troll or industry trade group, has to consider how much they can actually get out of a victim, since there are legal costs involved in filing the suit in the first place. These organized criminal enterprises, on the other hand, only have to do some hacking, and then fling their crap in every direction to see what sticks. Just as street criminals drive small businesses out of neighborhoods, leaving nothing but blight and boarded-up, rat-infested buildings, these online criminals could drive all the small e-commerce sites off the web and essentially cripple the web as a business method for all but the largest, wealthiest companies. So don't look for the authorities to step up efforts to combat this anytime soon.

    • really? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 7-Vodka ( 195504 )
      Is it really the extortionists driving the companies out of buisness, or is it that the companies played fast and loose with OUR personal data and now they are worried about the lawsuits?
      They figure the lawsuits and lost sales from this leaked information would cost X amount of money so they're willing to pay less than X to stop the leak. Maybe they should have kept the sensitive information safer in the first place.
      This is a result of either incompetence or knowingly cutting corners. (or just plain using
      • The problem isn't that a business gets hit with one of these guys and then has hard decisions to make. The real problem - like many others - is deciding that offering an online business makes sense when there is the possibility of getting hung out to dry by this kind of thing.

        Assume you are as careful as you can be, but obviously there is always the possibility of something being overlooked and that exposure being exploited. If that happens, what is the maximum downside? If paying the extortion isn't an

    • These organized criminal enterprises

      Do they have web sites? Post them on /. so everyone can have a look. :)

    • I know of a few small businesses that are in the boarded up mode. The web page contains nothing except yellow pages type information. It's a hosted site, so no exploitable information is even hackable. Hours of operation, some contact information, and list of products and services are all that's listed.

      All in all I think some businesses are too small to be exploited simply because they have too little exposure.
    • A legal extortionist, say, a patent troll or industry trade group, has to consider how much they can actually get out of a victim, since there are legal costs involved in filing the suit in the first place.

      Assuming there is always a clear demarkation between "legal" and "illegal" extortion.

      These organized criminal enterprises, on the other hand, only have to do some hacking, and then fling their crap in every direction to see what sticks. Just as street criminals drive small businesses out of neighborho

  • Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig@hogger.gmail@com> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:00AM (#10290934) Journal
    A clued-in story submitter who submits the print link.

    Bravo!

    * * *

    There are plenty of ways of preventing DDOS attacks, most of which, unfortunately, call for SKILLED network operators.

  • Trace the money (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dealsites ( 746817 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:02AM (#10290947) Homepage
    Can anyone explain how this actually works? Same with spammers too. If you transfer money, I'd think there would be an electronic trail of the money being transferred. After 9/11 they traced bank account of suspects, why can't they do it all the time? A lot of spam also generates sales, but why can't the money trail be followed to catch the bad guys?
    --
    Live deals online with a new server, can withstand a Slashdotting now. [dealsites.net]

    • Re:Trace the money (Score:5, Insightful)

      by YankeeInExile ( 577704 ) * on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:06AM (#10290963) Homepage Journal
      1. Phish for some schmoes Citibank account.
      2. Target BigWebsite.COM for extortion.
      3. Use patsy's bank as a drop box.
      4. Move as soon as the cash is in hand.

      • Not that simple.

        That schmoe's account that the extortionist got via phishing has to transfer the money somewhere else (to the extortionist). It will be detected once the shmoe finds out and complains.

        So, it may make detection harder or may take longer to detect, but eventually he will be caught.

        Unless he withdraws cash from Citibank, but yet again, the cameras at the bank has his picture.

      • 5. Profit :)
        Please remember to close your list next time. /. readers might get confused by your non-terminated list and start reading the rest of the comments as items in your list!

    • International Banking (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xyote ( 598794 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:11AM (#10290986)
      Without it, international extortion would be impossible. If you made the banks liable no matter how far the chain went, that kind of extortion would stop, just like that.

      There are analogies with the telcos enabling dial out frauds by sticking it to the customer. If the telcos and banks were responsible, they'd be real careful who they gave other people's money to.

    • Easy -- extortionist has the victim cable the money to some country full of corrupt officials. Extortionist gives corrupt officials a cut of the proceeds. In return, corrupt officials deny or delay any attempt to trace the transfer.

      Or simpler yet, extortionists tell victim "if anything stops us from getting the money undetected, the attack will go ahead".

    • The Trouble is that many of the busineses targeted are "fringe" businesses. In the example given of online-betting, they neglected to mention that such businesses are ILLEGAL in the US... even if you're a US citizen with the hosting off-shore you can't do anything Legally about it. The same with many of the businesses they would target...

      Think Sex-toys, porn, "grey" software, Xbox hacks, etc... depending on where you're at the local authourities may not even know you're in business....heck they may see

    • That is what banking privacy laws are for. You have a Swiss bank account that people send the money to and the Swiss will never disclose who you are. Same process can be done in the Cayman Islands where they have strong banking privacy.

  • You are so stupid if you pay! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by earthstar ( 748263 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:02AM (#10290948) Journal
    Atleast this extortion wont leave people in a dilemma whetehr to pay or not because there simply cannot be any question of paying, whatsoever may be the data!!

    This extortion isnt like conventional extortions where in you get your thing back when you pay.

    The extortionist obviously would have made copied of the data, and would hav given to so many of his friends.....If someones gonna pay,would he be paying to every one of the mails asking for the same data he had paid?


    LOL


    Sorry, but I think the website owner has already lost the battle - Unless the extortionist get caught - provided the duplicated data doesnt isnt with anyone!

    • Re:You are so stupid if you pay! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Beryllium Sphere(tm) ( 193358 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:17AM (#10291012) Journal
      Anecdotes in the security community say that what you predict is already happening. A bank will pay an extortionist to keep quiet, congratulate itself on cheaply avoiding a scandal, and then they're marked as a Target Which Pays and more extortion demands come in from other crooks.
      • I don't doubt it, but as you say its a short term "victory". If they paid once, they'll probably pay again. Repeat until they finally get some security. This is another situation where some up front investment (in security) will pay off in the long run, not to mention that actually protecting your customers data is the "right thing to do".
      • then they're marked as a Target Which Pays and more extortion demands come in from other crooks.

        How would they be marked? It's not like they're getting the front page of Online Blackmailer Magazine. If it's done quietly then the information doesn't go public, and contrary to popular belief there isn't some "underworld" where criminals stay in constant communication with each other.
      • This is why IBM did not buy out SCOX when the whole fiaSCO started.

  • This ocurred to me (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have a small ecommerce site and this ocurred to me one time.
    I received an email with my personal data and asking me to contact him.
    I contacted host service and investigate for possible bugs and raw logs, but I never reply. Finally I think they get my data from whois services.

  • Once again, a bad summary. (Score:5, Informative)

    by damiangerous ( 218679 ) <1ndt7174ekq80001@sneakemail.com> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:10AM (#10290984)
    Although 70% of the businesses surveyed for the article claim they never had to deal with extortion on the Internet,

    No, it doesn't say that at all. It says:

    "According to Carnegie Mellon's survey, 70% of those threatened with extortion say the attempts were unsuccessful."
    It does talk about how many businesses have had to deal with 'cyberextortion', and that percentage is just over half of the submitter's claims:
    "17% of the 100 companies surveyed say they've been the target of some form of cyberextortion."
    • Oh, and the other thing I forgot to mention about the summary is that the story isn't even about stealing customer data and using it for extortion. The story is about threatening random sites with DDoSing if they don't pay. Very different scenarios since it's far more difficult to protect against the later. Once again, good job submitter.
      • The company I work for recently had another type of extortion attempt. Our it manager got a phone call from some 'a domain registration company' in Rotterdam who said 'one of their clients' wanted to register a domain name and link it to a porn site. The url was the name of one of the companies in our group. This domain registration company however first checked if the name existed, and therefor wanted to know if our company wanted to buy it first for $1000..
        They couldn't send us any information, just wante

    • Re:Once again, a bad summary. (Score:5, Informative)

      by dema ( 103780 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:31AM (#10291079) Homepage
      If you look at the chart on the left side of the screen, you'll see the question: Has your company or any employee been the target of cyberextortion?. And, as indicated in the pie chart, 70% of those surveyed said No, just as the poster indicated. And in reference to the story only being about DDoSing, if you read the whole article you see:

      Cyberextortion mostly travels under the radar, but not always. Earlier this year, Myron Tereshchuk, 42, of Maryland, pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to extort $17 million from intellectual-property company MicroPatent LLC. He faces up to 20 years in jail. Tereshchuk threatened to leak confidential information and launch denial-of-service attacks against intellectual-property attorneys worldwide if he wasn't paid.

      In January, Thomas Ray, 25, of Mississippi, was indicted for allegedly claiming to have found a security flaw in Best Buy Co.'s systems and threatening to expose and exploit that flaw unless he was paid $2.5 million. A trial is expected this fall. And last year, Kazakhstan hacker Oleg Zezev was sentenced to 51 months for illegally entering Bloomberg L.P.'s systems and threatening to disclose the break-in if he wasn't paid $200,000.

      The first one threatened DDoSing in addition to leaking info, and the other examples had nothing to do with DDoS.
      • Okay, so I was wrong about the pie chart, but who the hell is "unsure" about being the target of extortion? Those people should be counted as "No".

        As for the method of extortion I stand by my statement. The article starts off with the sentence about an email received, the same as the summary does. That email though, threatened DDoSing, not leaking of customer data. The other anecdotes are more about the other types of extortion out there and aren't really the focus.

        I still say it was a rushed, poorly

        • Okay, so I was wrong about the pie chart, but who the hell is "unsure" about being the target of extortion? Those people should be counted as "No".

          Haha yeah I thought that too. I also like how they just have the chart sitting over there with no mention of it. The article itself just isn't very good, could've safely stayed in the ugly IT section :P

  • This story is part advertisement (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cryofan ( 194126 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:12AM (#10290991) Journal
    Like most media "news" stories.....
  • It seems that just like in the real world, extortionists like to target operations of dubious legality. I suspect the low-hanging fruit for people looking to carry out this kind of spam are businesses in the gray area of legality and respectability (online gambling, porn sites, "Mexican Drug Stores," etc.). Though profitable, these sites might have more to fear with going to the police than paying the extortionist. This is why, here in the real, non-virtual world, criminals often pray on illegal immigrant businesses for "protection" money. I also wonder whether the firms being targeted are also vulnerable because they're too shady to deal with firms like Akamai.

    Now if only cyber-extortionists would target well-known spammers...

    • What puts porn sites in a legal grey area? If everyone involved is a consenting adult, they shouldn't have anything to fear from using the legal system for defense.

      • If everyone involved is a consenting adult, they shouldn't have anything to fear from using the legal system for defense.

        In theory, you are correct. In practice, it's not so simple. Often law enforcement members themselves don't care for porn and won't take such complaints very seriously. Or they may see this as an opportunity to scrutinize the business and make their life difficult as they look for illegal things to bust them for (and even if there aren't any, that doesn't mean it's not a big proble

      • I think it's the 'respectability' grey area rather than the legal ones. You'd probably be more willing to stand up in court against someone for DDoS'ing your site selling wicker baskets, for example, than you would to say "yes, your honour, on the first of last month I received an email from a Mr 'I. R. Leet' threatening to DDoS our site, InflateAGranny.com, if we did not pay him the sum of $100,000".

  • insurance coverage (Score:3, Interesting)

    by coklat ( 577117 ) <ariefwn AT hotmail DOT com> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @11:13AM (#10290993) Homepage
    isnt there already an insurance policy for this kind of event... "business interruption policy"?

  • Insurance! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That is the way to go. Yes, security is a good start but it is impossible to completely become immune to attacks.

    Therefore I say to spend the resources on insurance and simply ignore the threats and attacks. The extortionist get nothing and may waste his power on absolutely nothing, running a serious risk of getting caught - all for nothing.

    The company has their assets insured and lose nothing.

    In a few days all the extortionists go back to breaking legs for the local loanshark. There they at least get so

  • It doesn't cost $100K to stop a DDoS attack! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mordant ( 138460 ) on Sunday September 19, 2004 @12:17PM (#10291296)
    All you have to do is send me $100/month for the next 12 months, and you're golden.

    We're good like that, right? ;>

  • Dont pay. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Sunday September 19, 2004 @12:49PM (#10291444)
    Contact the FBI or some other from of crime investigation unit. Change all the accounts if possible. Also you should make a bunch of fake accounts before hand (As well as tightening up your computer security, and for god sake Hire an independent consultant to run security audits on your network and your code as well if possible)

  • Threaten to put them on Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)

    by MinimeMongo ( 547025 ) <6cgi-9w09&xemaps,com> on Sunday September 19, 2004 @02:39PM (#10292035) Homepage
    Pay me one million dollars or I'll post your website URL on Slashdot.
  • > Although 70% of the businesses surveyed for
    > the article claim they never had to deal with
    > extortion on the Internet,

    And 30% [b]have had to deal with it?

    Jebus H. Christ[/b]. And here I was bitching because the tard-o-matic Feds couldn't handle throwing half the popup blockers in jail because they cause the popups themselves.

    Oh.

    My.

    God.

    Let's get some ass in gear, eh, George or John?
  • You DDOS me, we Slashdot you...
  • WagerWeb was knocked offline for about a day, says Dan Johnson, senior VP and senior oddsmaker at the site. Rather than pay off the attackers, the company called on its technical forces to build a defense and enlisted the help of Internet security-services provider Prolexic Technologies Inc. The vendor's services, at about $100,000 a year, aren't cheap. But, "I'd rather pay the $100,000 than pay the extortionists," Johnson says. The gamble paid off. "As soon as we got the service running, the attack stopped
  • While this is a case of an extortion attempt, I'd imagine that very similar things happen with stolen CC #'s from various sites being used improperly. One idea to help stop this might be if Visa were to create "bait numbers." Basically these would be Visa accounts which only to lure attempted scammers, and set off all kinda of nice red alarms when somebody attempts to use them.

    If many sites/businesses started to support the bait concept and put an effort to turning in the scammers, perhaps this would make

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