Friday, September 7, 2007

aa419 under attack.

aa419 (artists against 419 scams) is under serious DDOS attack, and mostly not accessible. In a cache at google, I found some of the following forum notes:


Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:13 pm
As some of you may have noticed, aa419.org has been under a severe DDOS attack the last days. The attack is still ongoing. Our fabulous tech specialists were able to block thousands of IP addresses. As a result we can keep the website online despite the attack.

We strongly suspect that a Russian crime syndicate is behind this - apparently they are a bit upset about many, many shut down job scam / money mule scam websites. So in a way this DDOS attack is good news, because it certainly means that we cost these people a LOT of money.

We absolutley intend to keep aa419 online and not give in to them. And we think this is a good time to get some more money mule / job scam websites shut down.


Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:42 pm
SumYunGai wrote:
Botnet time is expensive. I suppose you've passed the IP addresses on to ISPs so they can take the appropriate action, whether that's warning the user or shutting down their Internet connection.


Yes, we are passing the IP addresses on to the relevant ISPs. But we are talking about several thousand blocked IP addresses so far.


Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 4:52 pm
Allright, the hoster temporarily took down our server. The criminals were pounding our server at 400GB/h. That means, they severaly increased the attack after our excellent tech guys were able to keep aa419 online the last days despite the attack.

We will keep you updated.



Also, 419eater.com and Scamwarners.com appears to be under attack (see this blog). And according to CastleCops, which is another anti-phising/malware/spam site, several other sites, including CastleCops are under severe ddos attacks.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

For some time, aa419 was able to filter the worldwide botnet's attacks by monitoring connections and only allowing legitimate visitors to access the site. However, by September 5 our hoster was being overwhelmed with nearly 400 Gb of incoming requests every hour. Rather than let their infrastructure melt under the onslaught, the server is currently offline.

We are not the only ones affected this way. We managed to stay up for a few days, but our hoster could not put up with the onslaught of incoming packets.

We still intend to stay online. We will be back as soon as possible. Even without our main site, shutting down scam sites is continuing in many other locations. Botnet attacks like this just inspire us more.

Cheers,
Susan Williams
419suziecue@gmail.com while aa419 is down :-)

Unknown said...

It's surely not beyond the realms of technology, to be able to send some sort of disruptive code back to these botnet attackers,to kill their henious activitys once and for all
your's sincerely
B,King

watchout said...

gungadin, alas, I think it is not that easy. As the name implies botNET, this is a network of computers, mostly likely just a group of virus-infected PCs spread around the world. Each one sends separate requests from a distinct IP number. You have to block thousands of IP numbers across the world. Takes time.
If the attack came from a single computer then it would be no problem, just block that one.