Web Bot

[John Simkin]

Recently we suffered from a “denial of service” attack. This is done by spreading a rogue code, known as a bot, which links as many as 30,000 computers together without their owners’ knowledge. There are then activated to bombard websites with thousands of bogus queries a second, blocking all genuine transactions and communications.

Apparently criminal gangs based in Russia and other Eastern Europe countries, have been targeting company websites. They idea is that they bombard a website at a crucial time for the business, for example, a bookmaking site on a big race day. The criminals then send an email saying the company must pay a ransom of face renewed bombardment.