Cyber criminals are stepping up their extortion attempts using botnets to DDoS websites. They ask for ransom in exchange for not DDoS attacking the sites.

1. Augustine Fou- 1 -
Digital Extortion Cases
Ransom or DDoS
Dr. Augustine Fou
http://linkd.in/augustinefou
acfou @mktsci .com
June 2014

2. Augustine Fou- 2 -
Author’s Commentary
“Now that the bad guys have large botnets, they
can commit a large variety of crimes from digital
ad fraud to outright extortion, as the following
examples show. The botnets can be used to
generate billions of fake ad impressions to rip off
advertisers or to DDoS sites (i.e. take-down)
websites by overwhelming them with fake traffic)
in exchange for ransom money. But these are only
scratching the surface.”

3. Augustine Fou- 3 -
Feedly (Jun 2014)
On June 11, 2014, Feedly was attacked by a DDoS. The criminals tried
to extort money but Feedly refused to comply. Source:blog.feedly

4. Augustine Fou- 4 -
Evernote (Jun 2014)
On June 10, 2014 Evernote members were temporarily unable to
synchronize their notes their notes due to a DDoS attack. Source : bbc

5. Augustine Fou- 5 -
TypePad (May 2014)
In April 2014, Typepad experienced a DDoS attack that forced the site to go
offline for nearly five days. Then in May TypePad experienced another
attack. Source : techcrunch

6. Augustine Fou- 6 -
Basecamp (Mar 2014)
On March 24, 2014 Basecamp was
hit with a distributed denial attack
(DDoS) rendering its services
temporarily unavailable. The
criminals behind the attack had tried
to extort money in return for ending
the attack. Basecamp refused to
comply with the requests. Instead,
the company worked to mitigate the
effects of the DDoS. Basecamp
confirmed that no user data was
compromised in the attack.
Source: techcrunch

7. Augustine Fou- 7 -
Meetup (Feb 2014)
On February 27, 2014 a hacker contacted Meetup’s CEO asking for $300 to
prevent a DDoS attack. The attack immediately began and caused the
company to be unavailable for nearly 24 hours. Source: blog.meetup

8. Augustine Fou- 8 -
Vimeo (Jan 2013)
Vimeo experiences a DDoS attack in early 2013 which prevented about
half of its users from accessing the site. Source : vimeo's facebook

9. Augustine Fou- 9 -
Other examples
of extortion

10. Augustine Fou- 10 -
Miss Teen USA Hacked Photos
Miss Teen USA was the victim of a “sextortion” scam. Her webcam was
hacked into and the hacker took photos of her undress. The hacker then
asked for more pictures or a “performance” on Skype or else he would
release the photos. The hacker did this to several other girls as well.
Source : nydailynews

11. Augustine Fou- 11 -
CryptoLocker
CryptoLocker is a
randsomware trojan that
targets Microsoft Windows.
It is often disguised as a
legitimate email
attachment. It encrypts
certain files and then
displays a message that
offers to decrypt the data if
a payment is made.
Source : wikipedia

12. Augustine Fou- 12 -
Dr. Augustine Fou – Digital Consigliere
“I research digital ad fraud and other
cyber crimes that bad guys commit using
their armies of bots. I advise clients on
both technical and financial forms of
mitigating these kinds of risk.”
FORMER CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HCG (OMNICOM)
MCKINSEY CONSULTANT
CLIENT SIDE / AGENCY SIDE EXPERIENCE
PROFESSOR AND COLUMNIST
ENTREPRENEUR / SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
PHD MATERIALS SCIENCE (MIT '95) AT AGE 23
@acfou
ClickZ Articles: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-clickz
Slideshares: http://bit.ly/augustine-fou-slideshares
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/84444-augustinefou

13. Augustine Fou- 13 -
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