TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Hackers Attack Student's Web Site

Hackers Attack Student's Web Site

Associated Press News Wire (ap@telecom-digest.org)
Wed, 18 Jan 2006 22:13:18 -0600

A Web site that earned an enterprising British student $1 million
suffered a crippling attack by ransom-seeking hackers.

Alex Tew, 21, said Wednesday that his Million Dollar Homepage was
targeted after he publicized how it had helped him raise money for his
university studies.

Tew had sold 10,000 small squares of advertising space on the Web site
for $100 each, achieving his target in four months. His initiative
spawned several copycat sites.

But Tew said that on Jan. 7, he received a threat from an organization
calling itself "The Dark Group," demanding that he pay them $50,000
within 72 hours or face having his site taken down.

"It was written in poor English, but the hackers asked for $50,000,
saying that it was just 5 percent of what I had made," Tew said. "I
did not reply to the e-mail. I had no intention of paying."

Tew ignored the threat. Hackers then initiated a so-called distributed
denial of service, in which attackers take command of third-party
computers, through a virus or other security vulnerability, and
instruct them to send junk data to the target site, overwhelming
servers and causing the site to crash or perform poorly.

Tew said the site now works normally.

Tew, from Wiltshire, a county in southern England, said he informed
the FBI because his site is hosted in the United States.

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the agency was investigating.

Such extortion cases targeting Web sites are occurring with greater
frequency.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.

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