JOURNAL: Extortion through Systems Disruption

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, a form of online systems disruption, are getting extremely powerful. They can now top 17 Gbps (see diagram) in flow from a dedicated botnet (particularly infected computers located in countries with high speed consumer broadband). Additionally, global geographic diversity of these botnets means that the low and slow approach, a method that aims for partial disruption (remember Lawrence's approach) that forces companies to spend more on hardware/bandwith rather than spikes that force total shutdown, can be used to effect. In short, DDoS has become a supurb way to extort money from corporations.

However, criminals find it difficult to extract payments directly from corporations due to accounting rules, corporate charters, and legal liability. One good way to get around this impasse is to sell "protection" in the form of a third party DDoS prevention services. Here's a good article on how the Russian Business Network does it. This is very similar to how tribal, gangs, and militias usually get funding from the government to protect critical networks in the real world.

NOTE: Unfortunately, US Internet users are outgunned in the DDoS competition. The US ranks 38th in broadband globally. Our information networks are relatively easier to clog.

NOTE 2: Systems disruption has reached Nigeria's capital, Lagos. Two separate attacks (17 and 27 February) on towers that carry a critical 330 kV electricity line, has shut down power in the capital region. Sabotage and not copper "mining" was to blame. Is this connected to the arrest of Henry Okah? If so, it's smart.

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

Analogy:
The castles on the Rhine. In pre-modern times, the Rhine Valley was an important artery of commerce, much as the Internet is today. Feudal lords along the Rhine would levy fees on passing merchants much as the Russian Business Network apparently now is doing. They were the original, and literal, Robber Barons.

quote:
Since Roman times the Rhein valley has been a line of communication of vital strategic importance. In the Middle Ages the German emperors used it for their frequent progresses into Italy, and rich merchants sent their goods to and fro along it. Obviously anyone owning a castle overlooking the valley was in a powerful position, since he was able to survey and regulate the flow of traffic across his particular territory and levy tolls on merchants. This accounts for the large number of castles along the Rhein from Mainz to Bonn, particularly in the narrow gorge connecting Bingen and Koblenz. Along this stretch of river, which has a length of only thirty-five miles, there are more castles than in any other river valley in the world.

:end_of_quote
http://www.mediaspec.com/castles/rhein/index.html

[S]

John,

A bit off topic, but one of the overarching themes you hit on is the cocial cohesion and fracturing. Amazing that the newspapers are virtually ignoring the complete meltdown in the financial markets. The government is going to extreme measures to protect a system which is collapsing on itself. The implications for this are enormous and vastly underestimated. As americans come to realize that the past decade plus of increased "prosperity" was largely emphemeral - i.e. liquidity and leverage driven - and that their security (etc) already stripped from them via global trade policy are now having their savings pillaged by dollar devaluation. At some point Americans will not stand for this anymore. Sort of ironic that the only people tryuly laissle fair are the vast majorioty of Ameircans who are sitting back and presiding over so many parties which are acting diametreically opposite of thier interest. How long this last i don;t know, but it is a completlty unsustainable course just like the notion that real estate prices are a one way street. entrenched powers will do anything and everything to protect thier interests, but at some point these parochial interests are overwhelmed by the granular intersts of the people they purport to represent.

[Nicholas Weaver]

One comment: DDoS extortion has gotten far less significant, even with the attacks growing more powerful. Simply because the problem of transferring money is really hard, and that launching a DDoS attack tends to "Burn your bots": eliminating a resource because ISPs tend to turn off bot-infected systems these days (to save money).

I worry ALOT about electronic attacks, especially as criminal gangs have become the primary player, but DDoS seems less consequential then some of the other games they can play.