* * * * * Wake up! Time for DDoS > From: "MrSmith" > To:  > Subject: DDoS Warning > Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2017 22:08:05 +0400 > > Hello, root@conman.org > > FORWARD THIS MAIL TO WHOEVER IS IMPORTANT IN YOUR COMPANY AND CAN MAKE > DECISION! > > We are Phantom Squad > > Your network will be DDoS-ed starting Sept 30st 2017 if you don’t pay > protection fee - 0.2 Bitcoin @ 1W5FWQjvHGMkaPeuR4SvRNojsv64WgJNt. > > If you don’t pay by Sept 30st 2017, attack will start, yours service going > down permanently price to stop will increase to 20 BTC (Bitcoin) and will > go up 10 BTC for every day of attack. > > This is not a joke. > Not quite as dramatic as the last email I received from a black-hat cracker [1] but I do have to wonder—why me? I'm not a company. I don't make money from this blog. Heck, I don't make any money from my website [2] at all. So why target me? It doesn't make sense—I'm not a big enough target. Why not go after something with a bit more money, like a sports gambling site [3]? I mean, if this is the same Phantom Squad that took down XBox Live and PlayStaton Network [4] over Christmas of 2015, then yes, this could be bad. But as far as I could tell, that's the only attack Phantom Squad has done and they've been very quiet since. This might even be a scam [5]. I talked with my hosting company, and they said not to worry. If it happens, just give them a call and they can start working with their upstream provider to mitigate the attack. And under no circumstance am I to pay the danegeld [6] (which at the time of writing, 0.2 BTC is worth $802.46). [1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2004/09/19.1 [2] http://www.conman.org/ [3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2003/12/17.1 [4] http://news.softpedia.com/news/phantom-squad-starts-christmas-ddos-attacks-by-taking-down-ea-servers-498078.shtml [5] https://blogs.akamai.com/2017/04/low-risk-threat-ddos-extortion-letters.html [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danegeld Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org .