DDoS Extortionists Are Getting Paid Without a Single DDoS Attack

DDoS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attacks are on the rise, with more and more people suffering from the online attack. These attacks tend to hit companies and businesses sites, or even gaming networks and result in people losing access to their favourite sites or even the ability to talk to their friends online. It was only a matter of time before people started to make money from this, and a new scheme seems to extort people without a single DDoS attack.

In a set of emails sent to businesses, the companies are warned to pay a protection fee of 10 bitcoins, otherwise, they’ll lose access to their website and have the price increase by 10 bitcoins per day. The emails come from a group calling themselves the Armada Collective, saying that it’s not a joke.

The problem being is that CloudFlare, a company that protects people’s networks and sites from these kinds of attacks, found that not a single DDoS attack actually follows these threats or has ever been conducted in this barrage of extortion requests.

With payments going to an anonymous bitcoin account, it’s impossible for the Armada Collective to even figure out who has paid and who hasn’t, making the scheme look like nothing more than a money maker with no real threat. Bitcoin Analysis firm Chainalysis has studied  payments to the bitcoin account and noticed more than $100,000 going into the account.

Doubts are being raised over if this is, in fact, the Armada Collective. With nothing other than an email name and bitcoin address, the original members of the Armada Collective are locked up in jail raising questions about not just the scam but also the people behind it.