Polish Hackers Arrested for DDoS Blackmail

Two Polish script kiddies thought they could get a quick buck by taking out a gambling website and asking the owners to give them cash to make the attack stop. Their formula was DDoS + ?? = Profit. When they flew into the UK to collect the cash, they were busted by the cops.

From Softpedia here:

A couple of Polish men – Piotr Smirnaw, 31, and Patryk Surmacki, 35 – were arrested at the Heathrow airport in London last week. The two are accused of blackmailing a major Manchester-based company and launching a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack against one of its websites.

According to the Greater Manchester Police, the suspects have been taken into custody and questioned.

“This investigation centres on an allegation that the on-line company was blackmailed. As part of this blackmail attempt, one of the company’s websites was made temporarily unavailable by the offenders,” noted Detective Inspector Chris Mossop, of the Greater Manchester Police’s Serious Crime Division.

“Denial of service attacks have become increasingly common offences in recent years and can have a devastating effect on the victim’s on-line business or presence. They involve offenders flooding the target website with information, rendering it unable to function as it should do,” Mossop added.

The cyberattack, which lasted for 36 hours, prevented users from accessing the website.

I love it when stupid attackers become the victim. I doubt that the UK laws are stringent enough to do more than slap their wrists, but this plan of their was clearly not well thought-out.