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A Web site that earned an enterprising British student， named Alex Tew， $1 million suffered a crippling attack by ransom-seeking hackers.
Alex Tew， 21， said that his Million Dollar Homepage was targeted after he publicized how it had helped him raise money for his university studies.
Tew had sold 10，000 small squares of advertising space on the Web site for $100 each， achieving his target in four months. His initiative spawned several copycat sites.
But Tew said that on Jan. 7， he received a threat from an organization calling itself “The Dark Group，” demanding that he pay them $50，000 within 72 hours or face having his site taken down.
“It was written in poor English， but the hackers asked for $50，000， saying that it was just 5 percent of what I had made，” Tew said. “I did not reply to the e-mail. I had no intention of paying.”
Tew ignored the threat. Hackers then initiated a so-called distributed denial of service， in which attackers take command of third-party computers， through a virus or other security vulnerability， and instruct them to send junk data to the target site， overwhelming servers and causing the site to crash or perform poorly.
Tew said the site now works normally.
Tew， from Wiltshire， a county in southern England， said he informed the FBI because his site is hosted in the United States.
FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the agency was investigating.
Such extortion cases targeting Web sites are occurring with greater frequency. |
一名英國學生的個人網站遭到敲詐未果的“黑客”的嚴重襲擊，創建該網站的就是頗具創業精神的亞歷克斯·圖，他通過自己的個人網站賺取了100萬美元。
21歲的亞歷克斯·圖說他公佈了自己如何通過網站籌集大學學費的故事，隨後他的百萬美元網站主頁就受到了攻擊。
圖在他的網頁上劃分出1萬個小格子，並以每格100美元的價格出售廣告空間。他僅用了四個月的時間就實現了自己“一百萬美元”的目標。而他的創意也引來數家網站爭相效倣。
圖說，1月7日那天，他收到一個自稱為“黑色組織”發來的威脅郵件，要挾他在72小時內給交出5萬美元，否則他的網站就保不住了。
圖說，“郵件是用英文寫的，但英語很差。不過黑客明確提出要5萬美元，還說這只是我賺到的5%.我沒有回郵件，也不打算拿出這筆錢。”
圖對“黑色組織”的威脅並沒有太在意。隨即，黑客們就採取了所謂“分佈式拒絕服務”的攻擊，該攻擊利用病毒或其它安全缺陷控制傀儡機，並指引傀儡機向攻擊目標發送垃圾數據包，以擊垮服務器，導致網站癱瘓或運行不暢。
圖說，網站現在已經恢復正常了。
來自英國南部威爾特郡的圖說，他向美國聯邦調查局報了案，因為他網站的主機設在美國。
美國聯邦調查局發言人保爾·布裏森說，聯邦調查局正在調查這起事件。
這種敲詐勒索網站的案發率越來越高。 |
