A few weeks ago we discussed what has become an epidemic of extortion attempts against companies by people who demand that their victims pay up — typically by wiring money to an offshore bank — or face a poten- tially debilitating distributed denial-of-service attack. Many send the money rather than risk network hell — and they are also loath to notify the authorities for fear of bad publicity. Because trade press columnists get paid to tell others how to conduct their business, I had two suggestions regarding this matter: Make paying extortionists illegal so as to remove the temptation to take the shortsighted way out, and at the very least make reporting such crimes mandatory. This week we'll hear from readers who wrote in response to that column, and we'll share the results of an unscientific online survey conducted at www.networkworld.com. Next week, we'll hear from the heads of two companies that are on the frontlines of fighting distributed DoS attacks.They don't agree with my approach and have interesting alternatives of their own.
展开▼
