Cybercriminals have launched a
denial of service attack on anti-money laundering site
Bobbear.
Bobbear is a British website designed to inform the internet
community about websites set up by gangs to steal money from
innocent web users through email scams and money mule
operations.
Emails sent by the criminal gangs often claim to offer lucrative
earnings to those recipients who agree to move money in and out of
their bank accounts on behalf of a financial institution.
Web security firm Sophos reported that Bobbear came under fire
from a
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack using compromised
computers around the world.
The botnet of compromised computers was bombarding the website
with traffic, effectively blasting it off the internet and making
it impossible for legitimate visitors to reach the site.
Bobbear administrator Bob Harrison told Sophos that the botnet
is "huge" with "over half a million recorded zombie hits from
midnight Sunday to 8am yesterday".
"An attack like this is unfortunate news for the internet
community, as it disrupts the dissemination of hundreds of pages of
warnings about email frauds archived by Bob over the years," said
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos.
"It is appalling to see cybercriminals launch such a dirty
attack on a voluntary organisation that is actually doing something
positive to make the internet a safer place - it just goes to show
how unscrupulous these crooks are.
"The only consolation that Bobbear can take from this situation
is that they must be having an impact on the fraudsters if they are
prepared to go to such lengths to put the site out of
operation."