I recently received an email who threatens to attack a server I am running – unless I pay them 0.2 Bitcoin (about $93 US dollars). Anybody know how to handle this?
Below is the email:
—–
From: [email protected]
subject line: DDoS Attack Imminent – Important information
FORWARD THIS MAIL TO WHOEVER IS IMPORTANT IN YOUR COMPANY AND CAN MAKE DECISION!
We are Phantom Squad
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Phantom+Squad
Your network will be DDoS-ed starting June 1st 2016 if you don’t pay protection fee – 0.2 Bitcoin @ 14hxG5TBZz6jCZz4H7mzfzXfgXjgaF3MqA.
If you don’t pay by June 1st 2016, attack will start, yours service going down permanently price to stop will increase to 20 BTC and will go up 10 BTC for every day of attack.
This is not a joke.
Our attacks are extremely powerful – sometimes over 1 Tbps per second. And we pass CloudFlare and others remote protections! So, no cheap protection will help.
Prevent it all with just 0.2 BTC @ 14hxG5TBZz6jCZz4H7mzfzXfgXjgaF3MqA
Do not reply, we will not read. Pay and we will know its you. AND YOU WILL NEVER AGAIN HEAR FROM US!
Bitcoin is anonymous, nobody will ever know you cooperated.
Does something like this makes sense to you? https://www.cloudflare.com
Good luck.
@G
Thanks, G. Cloudflare sounds a good solution. Do you have experience with it?
I contacted CloudFlare and report the incident; below is their reply:
Justin (CloudFlare)
May 27, 3:22 PM
Hello,
We have received a handful of reports regarding threats made by this “Phantom Squad” group. We haven’t seen any indications of a confirmed attack from this group however. This is very likely to be another copycat group attempting to extort money by using the name of the previous “Phantom Squad” group from December 2015.
We’d encourage you to work with our support team to ensure your website is properly set up though for optimum security just to be extra safe however.
Thanks,
Justin