It is no secret that Bitcoin has become a favorite payment method for hoodlums and malicious individuals. Just a few weeks ago, a lot of companies around the world facing threats of ransomware, which would only decrypt files after the infected entity made a Bitcoin payment. And now DD4BC, a notorious group of extortionists, are targeting Scandinavian companies with complex Direct Denial of Service attacks.
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DD4BC – Notorious Gang of Bitcoin Extortionists
If you are a Scandinavian company using a centralized service for any of your business needs, you may be faced with a threat from DD4BC in the very near future. This group of hackers and hoodlums is targeting all kinds of Scandinavian companies and threatens to shut down their centralized service. Unless said company pays the vast sum of 40 Bitcoin, that is.
That being said, any company being targeted by DD4BC will first be attacked with a DDoS attack, after which the “group” will send an email demanding money. And the message in those emails is crystal clear: pay up, or your service will remain under attack for an undetermined period. This is not something any company – big or small – can afford.
One of the DD4BC emails reads as follows:
“Pay and you will not hear from us ever again! In many cases, our “customers” fear that if they pay us once, we will be back and ask for more. That’s not how we work. We never attack the same target twice. We do bad things, but we keep our word.“
Rather than sticking to one attack vector, DD4BC is notorious for stepping up their game and anticipating any counter move made. Even if their original attack would prove to be unsuccessful, the collective known as DD4BC can step up their game and switch tactics on the fly. In recent months, DD4BC has caused quite a bit of havoc for European financial institutions.
Andra Zaharia, a marketing & communication exec at Heimdal Security, told Bitcoinist:
“The typical pattern for the DD4BC gang is to launch DDoS attacks targeting Layer 3-4, but if this does not have the desired effect, they will/can move it to layer 7 with various types of loopback attacks with post/get requests.The initial attack typically lies on a scale between 10-20GBps. This is rather massive, but often not even close to the real threat.”
What are your thoughts on DD4BC? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: The Register
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