Scammers Threatening Website Owners to Launch DDoS Attacks

Internet security firm, Symantec, has seized a scam attempt, depending on scare tactics to scam domain owners into transferring virtual money, or experience a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against their website.

These spam emails come with subject lines - "Hosting - Important Updates and Information" to make it appear as if they come from the recipient's domain registrar.

According to the report, the emails include some spelling errors. Symantec comments that the spelling errors in the e-mails are left intentionally so that the message can escape content based anti-spam filters. But in this particular situation, they can also provide some amount of reliability to the sender as the name of the "hack project" sounds Slavic in origin.

In the e-mail in question, the spammer confesses to be a hacker with a network of computers at his disposal big enough to execute a DDoS attack on the user\'s website and asks the receivers to send him $200 to stop his use of this network against their websites.

The e-mail notifies that the hackers hold a huge network of Distributed Denial Of Service Attack that facilitates them to suspend any website. Further, it says that they are monitoring [domain_name] and found that users had spent hefty amounts for its developments and they wanted users to spend a little more.

Further, the message stated that a voluntary donation of just 200 bucks to their fund would keep their website protected from DDOS attack. The scammers alleged that if the money was not sent to them within 48 hours in the form of a Webmoney Payment Check, another zero would be added to the amount, making it $2,000.

Security experts said that despite the presence of "financial penalties", a popular scheme employed in professional DDoS extortion letters, this spamvertised campaign is an apparent effort to trick user, indicating that there are less possibilities of having the DDoS capabilities, which spammers are referring to.

Symantec experts inform that attempts of collecting money or personal details through strategies like those cited here are very frequent in scam attacks. Symantec also suggest that users should avoid e-mails from unidentified senders.

Related article: Scammers Exploit Tax System Resulting in ID Theft

» SPAMfighter News - 8/27/2010