As Bitcoin Price Surges, DDoS Extortion Gangs Return in Force (zdnet.com) 36
Extortion groups that send emails threatening companies with DDoS attacks unless paid a certain fee are making a comeback, security firm Radware warned today. From a report: In a security alert sent to its customers and shared with ZDNet this week, Radware said that during the last week of 2020 and the first week of 2021, its customers received a new wave of DDoS extortion emails. Extortionists threatened companies with crippling DDoS attacks unless they got paid between 5 and 10 bitcoins ($150,000 to $300,000).
Radware said that some of the emails it seen were sent by a group that was active over the 2020 summer when the extortionists targeted many financial organizations across the world. Companies that received this group's emails last summer also received new threats over the winter, Radware said. The security firm believes that the rise in the Bitcoin-to-USD price has led to some groups returning to or re-prioritizing DDoS extortion schemes.
Radware said that some of the emails it seen were sent by a group that was active over the 2020 summer when the extortionists targeted many financial organizations across the world. Companies that received this group's emails last summer also received new threats over the winter, Radware said. The security firm believes that the rise in the Bitcoin-to-USD price has led to some groups returning to or re-prioritizing DDoS extortion schemes.
connection? (Score:3)
Surely the price in units that the companies use will be set to maximize profits.. If bitcoin is worth more, the number of bitcoins requested is lower, and vice versa.
The higher price of bitcoin just means that the DDOS attackers' payment is a lower number.
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force people into bitcoin to pretend there is liquidity
Extorting people into buying bitcoins creates actual liquidity, so they would not be pretending.
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Exactly. There is no connection. This is just more crapcoin hype.
Good Twitter threads about Bitcoin (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's a couple of good Twitter threads [twitter.com] by Stephen Diehl (@smdiehl) about what Bitcoin really is (with an earlier one further down below).
*** TRIGGER WARNING The Bitcoin boosters might want to overt their eyes! ***
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One person, illiterate in engineering and economics, wrote a thread on a topic he doesn't understand.
Have Fun Staying Poor!
Funny how posts like this just serves to prove what I've been saying as well: Bitcoin is just for the other 1%: this this around that 1% is all the geeks.
While the whole idea of blockchain is novel and innovating, Bitcoin itself has literally failed at its own promise of making it 'liberating' and 'accessible to all'.
Of course, the Bitcoin boosters like to espouse it just like Wall St. likes to espouse "trickel-down economics" or how corporate tax cuts "benefit everyone".
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From TFS: "The security firm believes that the rise in the Bitcoin-to-USD price has led to some groups returning to or re-prioritizing DDoS extortion schemes."
It's an opinion piece.
Price surge? (Score:5, Insightful)
What does the price surge have to do with the increase in DDoS extortions? If Bitcoin is low, they can simply ask for more coins.
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Whatever those alternatives may be, Bitcoin isn't one of them.
1. Bitcoin is 10^6 times more volatile than those "Magic Rubber Inflatobucks" you complain about.
2.
A single bitcoin transaction alone consumes 621 KWh, or half a million times more energy consumption than a credit card payment.
Face it, Bitcoin is a failure.
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The hype stirs up the greed.
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Indeed. Just more crapcoin hype.
No connection (Score:2)
This is just another BTC "pump" article. Extortionists just convert whatever they think the victim can pay into bitcoin and then pray the crapcoin does not crash too hard before they can convert it to something with real worth.
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This is just another BTC "pump" article.
Yup. "The price is going up, I better buy!!" and then "The price is going down, I better buy!!"
I find that the less I hear/see/read about cryptocurrencies, the happier I am. It's seems like tulip speculation, but without actual tulips.
I'm curious- how do you turn crapcoins into real money? Where does one go to exchange them? Pretty sure my bank would laugh in my face if I tried to deposit or redeem Bitcoins.