A few weeks ago I wrote about a botnet attack against two MMORPG auction sites, MMOBay.net and Playersauctions.com, which brought both sites down for days. Since then I have been in contact with many of the individuals that run or own these types of sites and what’s going on is nothing less than a major attack on the entire MMORPG account and gold selling industry.
In the last few weeks I learned that it just wasn’t these two sites that were being targeted, but dozens of similar sites, many that are still down today. The attacks are sophisticated and scalable, by scalable I mean they gradually increase in power until the site goes down then plateaus.
Talking with many of the site owners, many have stated they have received extortion emails asking for money in return for the attacks to stop. I was showed a few emails and they were something along the lines of “Pay us and we’ll leave you alone“.
The email address used originated to a Russian website, but I will not post the site as the email address could have been faked or stolen.
After 3 weeks of continuous attacks, it seems like many of the larger sites are back up and running, however the smaller sites that can’t afford to upgrade their networks are still down.
It seems criminal orginizations have taken notice of the success and sheer number or these virtual good sellers and are now using their vast bot networks in an attempt to make some quick cash off of them.
Pretty malicious and evil is you ask me. I think the hackers think they can get away with it because gold sellers are usually looked upon in a bad light. I detest all forms of hacking though, regardless of who’s it against.
Call the cops. DDOS attacks are actually ILLEGAL. :(