Akamai Technologies have previously released a research on the active operations of DD4BC, an extortion group which initiates DDoS attacks to get payments in bitcoin. Some regional banks in Hong Kong are currently being eyed by this group, and according to the chief strategist for cybersecurity, John Ellis, “We are also seeing it happening in South Korea and Japan.”
What makes the Asian markets so attractive to cybercrime? Aside, of course, from the fact that most of the bitcoin transactions are made in Asia, a great number of analysts believe that these regions are the best place to incubate the cryptocurrency before the expected big boom in value.
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DD4BC has started their journey in America, giving threats of DDoS attacks to corporate servers with a corresponding Bitcoin ransom. The initial amounts were 10 to 20 bitcoin, which can be regarded significantly valuable a year ago. Nowadays, the finance sector seems like the perfect sitting duck they have decided to prey upon. Despite having eyes on other verticals, it’s safe to say the banking sector is their main focus now.
With Akamai Technologies, they have deployed around 200,000 different servers in various countries. In a statement by Ellis, he claimed,
“We have different things that we can do at the edge of the Internet so that there is no impact in the backend. The customer’s environment continues to operate irrespective of the fact that they are under attack.”
However, Akamai’s biggest concern is the Hong Kong companies who the group will most likely attack next. With Hong Kong sheltering many finance companies and where bitcoin is utilised with some regulation, it is a viable warning.
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Fairly recently, DD4BC announced to uncover targeted associations by means of online networking, adding to the harm brought about by the DDoS assault itself. The objective obviously is to collect more consideration for the group’s capacity to make administration interruptions by freely humiliating the target and staining the organization’s notoriety through these wide-coming to channels.
