Newsweek has an interesting story about extortionists threatening to knock down online gambling web sites unless they pay the extortionists a fee to “fix the problem.” (Hat Tip: Vice Squad)
This is a small part of a bigger trend; Internet extortion is an international growth business. Thanks to the Internet, anyone located anywhere in the world can hack into or threaten to take down an Internet site. It is generally quite difficult to trace back the trail of electronic bread crumbs back to find the bad guy. For a private company, it is nearly impossible. There are even fewer options if the bad guy is located in a country without a functioning legal system. The Internet knows no borders, but the legal system does. From the perspective of law enforcement, an extortionist located in a country where the local police will not cooperate with them and won’t comply with extradition requests may as well be on Mars.
All of which means that an extortionist with some basic computer skills and an Internet connection can cause a lot of havoc.
UPDATE: Reader Eric Rescorla points out that these days you can even buy a DDOS attack online from Russian hackers. And who says that Russia hasn’t embraced the free market?
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