OcUK DDoS attack - £10,000 reward

[Deleted member 651465]

If I knew who this was they'd be getting a horses head in their bed.

How sad do you have to be to try and take down someone's business?

Why not try a great escape tactic? "Alright hackers"..."hi"...."ahhhhAAAAAAA-HHAAAAA"

 

[Strife212]

so in order to carry this out someone has to first write and distribute spyware? incredible that someone would go to such lengths to attack a site. what do they get out of it? or is it for kicks?

Huge botnets are already set up, you can hire them for a price.

 

[bigredshark]

I'm doubting they'll catch whoever launched the attack at all, especially if they haven't made any stupid mistakes. The attack is launched from hundreds, or even thousands of random computers that have been infected with the malicious software that sends hundreds of packets to the OcUK server, this effectively stops legitimate packets getting through.

Basically all the attacker needed to do was plant the software on hundreds of computers (botnet) and launch the attack from the 'master' software using encryption/proxies etc.

It's near on untraceable if done well.

So Spie, was it a ransom?

As I mentioned previously, no need to plant the software yourself. Botnets are easily available for hire these days, just buy a pre-made one for...well no need to give away too much information I guess...

 

[Jura55ic]

It dont suprise me with the reports of bad customer service ive been hearing about.. and i doubt the person will ever be found.

Still i spose its still out of order..to do an attack like this

 

[Dist]

Quick question to those who know lots about networks, what is the actual problem with dos attacks that cause the problems? Is it the mass of connections simply overwhelming the capabilities of the router, or is it the ammount of connections filling up all the available bandwidth?

Im just curious as to if ddos attacks can be avoided by simply buying a big fat pipe to supply bandwidth with, or would the number of connections still overwhelm the routers even if there is plenty of available bandwidth?

 

[indup]

Woa.

Damn I wish I was more computer literate.

you dont have to be you just need to know the guy who is.

 

[Craig321]

so in order to carry this out someone has to first write and distribute spyware? incredible that someone would go to such lengths to attack a site. what do they get out of it? or is it for kicks?

Not necessarily, the botnet (group of 'zombied' computers) might have already been set up ready for use to attack a server of choice, there are groups of people who set these up just to have an attack 'ready' if they ever want to launch an attack.

But yes, someone might have gone to the trouble setting up a botnet and writing a DDOS script to attack OcUK, it wouldn't surprise me.

Sometimes it's for a ransom (e.g. they'll send Spie an email demanding a certain amount of money, once he's paid they'll stop the attack), or it could simply be a disgruntled customer who wants to try bring the company down or cause the loss of a lot of business.

Or it could even be to gain some respect in the 'hacker world'. A hacker would gain a lot of respect if they bring down a big company/website.

As I mentioned previously, no need to plant the software yourself. Botnets are easily available for hire these days, just buy a pre-made one for...well no need to give away too much information I guess...

Yep, I've been offered botnet services before. Some dodgy people offered me all sorts back when I was hosting - I was offered to become part of the 'scene' ('the scene' is basically the people who distribute the illegal films, programs etc.) I was also offered botnet services.

 

[Hedge]

It dont suprise me with the reports of bad customer service ive been hearing about.. and i doubt the person will ever be found

oh god.

bad thing to say. As for customer service OCUK is pretty good actually, its the usual fact that people who get good service dont say much, but those who get a bad experience feel the need to tell the world and spam review sites

 

[bigredshark]

If I knew who this was they'd be getting a horses head in their bed.

How sad do you have to be to try and take down someone's business?

Well, if you knocked their site offline, then you go and demand £x or you'll do it again - classic extortion and, if you get round the illegal bit, hardly sad. It's a staple of the russian mafia and people like that these days.

If it's a grudge, then it's a bit sad, but there's money in these types of attacks...

 

[bigredshark]

Quick question to those who know lots about networks, what is the actual problem with dos attacks that cause the problems? Is it the mass of connections simply overwhelming the capabilities of the router, or is it the ammount of connections filling up all the available bandwidth?

Im just curious as to if ddos attacks can be avoided by simply buying a big fat pipe to supply bandwidth with, or would the number of connections still overwhelm the routers even if there is plenty of available bandwidth?

The attacker doesn't much care, but being overwhelmed by the number of sessions (connections) will happen far quicker than bandwidth saturation in almost all attacks. An efficient attack could knock a website without protection offline in less on a small server offline with 20mbps of traffic or less quite easily.

 

[BigglesPiP]

could be for money.

Somali Pirates?

 

[Clowned]

What an interesting read, this has been

Shame about the downtime obviously ... it ruined my afternoon at work not been able to see This Week Only deals! Hope the site stays up, be nice seeing a BBC news story of someone getting the rap for this in the future !!

 

[RoboCod]

What I don't understand: it must take the offender a lot of time and effort to do something like that, but for what gain? It isn't going to make them money is it, it will just earn them a criminal record.

 

[Craig321]

I really can't see a disgruntled member of the OcUK forums have the ability to perform a DDOS. I just can't imagine a botnet owner casually posting on OcUK, don't ask me why...

EDIT - 500 posts in 4 years, I'm such a post count whore.

This forum is huge, it wouldn't surprise me if a few people that hang around here have access to botnet services, as I said above I was offered botnet services when I was hosting.

What I don't understand: it must take the offender a lot of time and effort to do something like that, but for what gain? It isn't going to make them money is it, it will just earn them a criminal record.

No effort really, as mentioned above you can buy botnet services if you know the right people/know where to look, the services could even be free if the attacker is friends with the right people. All it requires is the attacker to enter the server address in the 'master' client and click launch - this'll send a request to all the zombied computers to start the attack.

The master software, of course, wouldn't be located on the attackers computer, it'd most likely be simply on another zombied computer.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Quick question to those who know lots about networks, what is the actual problem with dos attacks that cause the problems? Is it the mass of connections simply overwhelming the capabilities of the router, or is it the ammount of connections filling up all the available bandwidth?

Im just curious as to if ddos attacks can be avoided by simply buying a big fat pipe to supply bandwidth with, or would the number of connections still overwhelm the routers even if there is plenty of available bandwidth?

A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted, malevolent efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.

One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.

 

[bigredshark]

Interestingly, I was discussing a few weeks ago enabling outbound DDOS detection on our IDP boxes, which would effectively prevent anybody taking a connection from us from taking part (unwittingly) in a DDOS attack. I suspect in a few years a lot of ISPs will do this which will serious mitigate these attacks - until the black hats find something new...

 

[Rroff]

Quick question to those who know lots about networks, what is the actual problem with dos attacks that cause the problems? Is it the mass of connections simply overwhelming the capabilities of the router, or is it the ammount of connections filling up all the available bandwidth?

Im just curious as to if ddos attacks can be avoided by simply buying a big fat pipe to supply bandwidth with, or would the number of connections still overwhelm the routers even if there is plenty of available bandwidth?

All of those things basically.

You could keep adding more internet connections to your present server and setting up server clusters to keep abreast of the processing and bandwidth requirements but it would quickly become very costly.

 

[Strife212]

Hmm...perhaps not

 

[bigredshark]

What I don't understand: it must take the offender a lot of time and effort to do something like that, but for what gain? It isn't going to make them money is it, it will just earn them a criminal record.

If you're in the know, then it takes very little effort and just a bit of cash to get control of a botnet. Depends how well protected your target is.

Seriously though, you'd be shocked how easy it is. If I was off a mind to I could knock most small sites offline in a couple of hours and I'm hardly part of the 'scene', I know a few places because I spend a lot of time designing countermeasures but i'm hardly a hacker...

 

[NiCkNaMe]

What I don't understand: it must take the offender a lot of time and effort to do something like that, but for what gain? It isn't going to make them money is it, it will just earn them a criminal record.

Reduces the shops capabilities to trade, and hence the business goes elsewhere.