A US credit card processing firm has been hit by
intermittend and large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks
that have disrupted services.
Authorize.Net is owned by Lightbridge and provides payment
processing services for more than 91,000 small to medium-sized
e-commerce firms.
David Schwartz, the company's marketing director, said
Authorize.Net has been the subject of a massive DDoS attack that
targeted the company's payment gateway service and resulted in
periods of "brief disruptions" for customers.
The company received an extortion demand a few days before the
attacks began, asking for a "substantial amount of money", Schwartz
said.
"It was sent to our general mailbox," Schwartz said. Law
enforcement authorities, including the FBI, are investigating.
This is not the first time Authorize.Net has been the subject of
such attacks, Schwartz said. "We have been attacked in the past,
but not on this scale and with such tenacity," he said.
The attack has resulted in an extremely high number of calls to
the company's customer support center, the company said.
The attack is the latest example of a growing trend, said Tom
Corn, a vice-president at Mazu Network, a supplier of
DDoS-mitigation technologies.
Jaikumar Vijayan writes for Computerworld