Fake DDoS attacks are leading to real extortion

Dive Brief:

DDoS attack threats appear to be on the rise, according to The Verge.
Several VPN services were recently targeted in attacks that turned out to be fake.
While most companies did not give in to the requests, others apparently did: More than $100,000 has been sent to Armada-linked bitcoin addresses since March, according to CloudFlare.

Dive Insight:

Cloak, as well as some other VPN companies, were recently threatened and asked to pay in bitcoins to "prevent" a threatened DDoS attack. VPN services are particularly vulnerable to DDoS attacks because administrators usually can’t distinguish between bad requests and legitimate users.

The group believed responsible, called Armada, has sent more than 100 threats since March, according to CloudFlare. None of them resulted in a real DoS attack.

"It doesn’t cost any money to send out a blanket of emails once you have the right contacts," Yuri Frayman, CEO of ZenEdge, told The Verge. "You often get payments for almost no effort. It’s a spray-and-pray approach to getting paid."