Techwatch weathers DDoS extortion attack
Techwatch is back online following a sustained denial of service attack that left the digital TV news site unavailable for two days earlier this week.
The botnet-powered assault was accompanied by blackmail demands posted on the site's forum through compromised zombie machines. These threatening messages claimed the site was been carpetbombed with spurious traffic generated through a 9,000 strong botnet of compromised machines.
Techwatch was able to restore the site to normal after applying advanced traffic filters.
Brian Turner, Executive editor of Techwatch, told El Reg that the assault is evidence that denial of service extortion attacks are a problem not just for traditional targets such as bookmakers but for mainstream web businesses.
Techwatch was hit by a 446Mbps distributed denial of service attack on Tuesday, 27 January which rose to 2Gbps on Wednesday. The deluge of spurious (SYNflood) requests left the site unable to cope with genuine visitors.
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