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| Alex Tew |
A Web site that earned an enterprising British student, named Alex Tew,
$1 million suffered a crippling attack by ransom-seeking hackers.
Alex Tew, 21, said 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.
(Agencies) |
一名英國學(xué)生的個人網(wǎng)站遭到敲詐未果的"黑客"的嚴(yán)重襲擊，創(chuàng)建該網(wǎng)站的就是頗具創(chuàng)業(yè)精神的亞歷克斯·圖，他通過自己的個人網(wǎng)站賺取了100萬美元。
21歲的亞歷克斯·圖說他公布了自己如何通過網(wǎng)站籌集大學(xué)學(xué)費的故事，隨后他的百萬美元網(wǎng)站主頁就受到了攻擊。
圖在他的網(wǎng)頁上劃分出1萬個小格子，并以每格100美元的價格出售廣告空間。他僅用了四個月的時間就實現(xiàn)了自己"一百萬美元"的目標(biāo)。而他的創(chuàng)意也引來數(shù)家網(wǎng)站爭相效仿。
圖說，1月7日那天，他收到一個自稱為"黑色組織"發(fā)來的威脅郵件，要挾他在72小時內(nèi)給交出5萬美元，否則他的網(wǎng)站就保不住了。
圖說，"郵件是用英文寫的，但英語很差。不過黑客明確提出要5萬美元，還說這只是我賺到的5%。我沒有回郵件，也不打算拿出這筆錢。"
圖對"黑色組織"的威脅并沒有太在意。隨即，黑客們就采取了所謂"分布式拒絕服務(wù)"的攻擊，該攻擊利用病毒或其它安全缺陷控制傀儡機，并指引傀儡機向攻擊目標(biāo)發(fā)送垃圾數(shù)據(jù)包，以擊垮服務(wù)器，導(dǎo)致網(wǎng)站癱瘓或運行不暢。
圖說，網(wǎng)站現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)恢復(fù)正常了。
來自英國南部威爾特郡的圖說，他向美國聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局報了案，因為他網(wǎng)站的主機設(shè)在美國。
美國聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局發(fā)言人保爾·布里森說，聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局正在調(diào)查這起事件。
這種敲詐勒索網(wǎng)站的案發(fā)率越來越高。
(中國日報網(wǎng)站編譯)
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Updated: 2006-01-23 09:27
