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Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks

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Re: Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks

#4
post #2

heh...basecamp, meetup, vimeo, and bit.ly are 'small'. Are there any documented instances of this happening to smaller startups? And, relatedly, are a set of best practices emerging to deal with this sort of a thing?

I'd be really curious to see best practices for smaller startups. We've never been hit with a DDOS, but bot attacks seem pretty commonplace. I'd love to see the open source community come together to create some mitigation strategies, though I admit I don't know what they would entail.

Re: Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks

#5
A great way to push policies and technologies towards a more regulated Internet.

I might have my tinfoil hat on here but without any doubt we need to make away with all the centralization because that's what is the problem, really.

Aggressive push towards distributed services - think bittorrent/sync and bitcoin/blockchain technology as the solution to distributed network attacks.

Challenge accepted?

Re: Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks

#6
post #5

A great way to push policies and technologies towards a more regulated Internet. I might have my tinfoil hat on here but without any doubt we need to make away with all the centralization because that's what is the problem, really. Aggressive push towards distributed services - think bittorrent/sync and bitcoin/blockchain technology as the solution to distributed network attacks. Challenge accepted?

The hard problem there is the business model, not the technology.

Re: Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks

#7
post #5

A great way to push policies and technologies towards a more regulated Internet. I might have my tinfoil hat on here but without any doubt we need to make away with all the centralization because that's what is the problem, really. Aggressive push towards distributed services - think bittorrent/sync and bitcoin/blockchain technology as the solution to distributed network attacks. Challenge accepted?

The hard problem there is the business model, not the technology.

Namecoin, Ethereum and Open Transactions come to mind.

Maybe the future is much more evenly distributed and we all make a living by offering energy and computing power to those services? Why did PGP never take off? I would love to set up my own "miner" for it to play its part in a truly decentralized and secure Email service. Open source as the "business model" is key in that scenario.

I don't have enough energy nor am I smart enough to actually create those kinds of services but I do feel stuff like that is the way out of this mess.

Interesting articles on topic:

"Enter The Blockchain: How Bitcoin Can Turn The Cloud Inside Out"

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/22/enter-the-blockchain-how-bi...

"Can Namecoin Obsolete ICANN (and More)?"

http://theumlaut.com/2014/02/05/namecoin-icann/

Re: Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks

#8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard problem there is the business model, not the technology.

Namecoin, Ethereum and Open Transactions come to mind. Maybe the future is much more evenly distributed and we all make a living by offering energy and computing power to those services? Why did PGP never take off? I would love to set up my own "miner" for it to play its part in a truly decentralized and secure Email service. Open source as the "business model" is key in that scenario. I don't have enough energy nor…

The problem here is that the money is made by providing commodity services rather than engineering effort. So the person who designs the innovative decentralized system makes much less money than the person who can throw a lot of cheap servers into a rack.

Re: Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks

#9
post #3

I was speaking to someone in the esports industry yesterday who said that DDoS attacks have become a real problem in high tier tournaments. Apparently you can get a bot net which is more than capable of blowing out the whole opposing team for as low as $100.

The problem of DDoS in high tier gaming isn't a new one, probably 10 years or longer. What I don't understand however, is why these players who are affected by DDoS are still leaking their IP with Skype all the time.

Uninstall Skype, get a new IP, and it'll probably never happen to them again.

Re: Tech Startups Are Targets of Ransom Cyberattacks

#10
post #2

heh...basecamp, meetup, vimeo, and bit.ly are 'small'. Are there any documented instances of this happening to smaller startups? And, relatedly, are a set of best practices emerging to deal with this sort of a thing?

I think the chances are "smaller" start ups are not a big target since they don't have the resources for future payoffs, or even initial pay offs. If it took the same effort would you rob a homeless man?
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