DDoS extortion campaign targets financial firms, retailers

From welivesecurity.com

Over the last few weeks, a cybercrime group has been extorting various organizations all over the world by threatening to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against them unless they pay thousands of dollars in Bitcoin.

The attackers have been targeting organizations operating in various industries, notably finance, travel, and e-commerce. However, they don’t seem to be targeting any specific region, as ransom letters have been sent to organizations residing in the United Kingdom, the United States and the Asia-Pacific region.

According to ZDNet, the group is also behind a string of attacks against MoneyGram, YesBank, Braintree, Venmo, and most recently also the New Zealand stock exchange, which has been forced to stop its trading for three days running.

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