www.pcpro.co.uk
Criminal gangs are trying to blackmail online bookmakers in advance of the Grand National in April, according to the Financial Times. The gangs are threatening DDoS attacks on online web sites servers making it impossible for visitors to contact them to make bets.
According to KPMG the British Internet gambling market was worth £2.1 billion in 2002 which is expected to rise to £5 billion by 2006.
The report is the latest example of a world wide trend whereby companies who increasingly depend on their websites to do business are being targeted by gangs who threaten to bring down sites if their demands are not met. It is thought that many gambling sites were targeted in advance of the US Superbowl final last month.
Although attacks on site such as that on SCO.com have a high profile many others are not widely reported as the companies concerned don't want to publicise that they have been subject to assault. And naturally those that do pay up don't want the fact known.
The problem of DDoS blackmail has been steadily increasing since the first Denial of Service attacks were made several years ago. Since then the rise of broadband connections which may be poorly firewalled and the increased prevalence of worms which spread through the internet and install software primed to attack a site at a particular time have mushroomed. At the same time it has been difficult to distinguish between a machine making a legitimate request to a web site and a 'zombie' machine which is part of a co-ordinated attack.
Although defences against DoS attacks are slowly evolving by, for example, learning to ignore some patterns of behaviour from a machine which has been turned into a zombie - by ignoring 'pings' or requests from a network which is being used as a 'reflector'. However, the use of worms to turn tens of thousands of machines into zombies, which make apparently legitimate requests, remains a problem.
Criminal gangs are trying to blackmail online bookmakers in advance of the Grand National in April, according to the Financial Times. The gangs are threatening DDoS attacks on online web sites servers making it impossible for visitors to contact them to make bets.
According to KPMG the British Internet gambling market was worth £2.1 billion in 2002 which is expected to rise to £5 billion by 2006.
The report is the latest example of a world wide trend whereby companies who increasingly depend on their websites to do business are being targeted by gangs who threaten to bring down sites if their demands are not met. It is thought that many gambling sites were targeted in advance of the US Superbowl final last month.
Although attacks on site such as that on SCO.com have a high profile many others are not widely reported as the companies concerned don't want to publicise that they have been subject to assault. And naturally those that do pay up don't want the fact known.
The problem of DDoS blackmail has been steadily increasing since the first Denial of Service attacks were made several years ago. Since then the rise of broadband connections which may be poorly firewalled and the increased prevalence of worms which spread through the internet and install software primed to attack a site at a particular time have mushroomed. At the same time it has been difficult to distinguish between a machine making a legitimate request to a web site and a 'zombie' machine which is part of a co-ordinated attack.
Although defences against DoS attacks are slowly evolving by, for example, learning to ignore some patterns of behaviour from a machine which has been turned into a zombie - by ignoring 'pings' or requests from a network which is being used as a 'reflector'. However, the use of worms to turn tens of thousands of machines into zombies, which make apparently legitimate requests, remains a problem.
