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The rapid growth of home broadband connections may be inadvertently encouraging what police suspect could be the beginning of a new crime wave: the cyber-blackmail. To connect more households to provision services faster Internet, their computers are vulnerable to intrusion and virus authors can make machines that "zombie" prepared to carry out any malevolent agenda.
The favorite targets of extortionists - many of whom are believed to come from Eastern Europe - have been casinos and shops, but one prominent recent victim was the Port of Houston.
After all, is an old type of offense, but using the latest technologies, "said a spokesman for the Technological Crime Unit of the
British agents to combat cyber-crime have asked companies to report on the attacks against their Internet businesses after a recent spate of incidents with the characteristic of extortion.
Police detected an increase in DoS attacks against businesses' online '.
In some cases, attacks that can disable a corporate network with a barrage of bogus data requests, are followed by a request for money. An effective attack can leave a page out of business' web 'for extended periods.
Casino 'online' seems to be a favorite target because they are dynamic and many businesses are located in the Caribbean, where researchers are not well equipped to address such attacks.
Police said that given the lack of information of companies victims of the attacks, they are not sure if they are isolated incidents or the beginning of a new wave of crime.
Whatever the reason, denial of service attacks are increasing, coinciding with the proliferation of broadband deployment in homes. Security experts believe that the growing number of insecure home PCs may have an important responsibility.