A number of companies have been targeted over the past weeks

Apr 1, 2014 11:27 GMT  ·  By

On Sunday, March 30, email marketing service Mad Mimi was hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack. Shortly after, they received an email from someone who asked for 1.8 Bitcoins to stop launching attacks.

“I don’t have to explain myself. I will stop the attack for 1.8 Bitcoin (~$830). Your network will be safe from further attacks, think twice before making your decision. Let me know if you are interested in my offer,” read the email from someone named Mark Nsd.

Immediately after, Mad Mimi took steps to mitigate the attack. Then, the cybercriminal sent the following email: “I stopped the flood at the moment, and I’ll wait for your response for 24 hours.”

“A DDoS attack targets our network, essentially severing the link between our servers and the internet. Your data is safe but during the attack, it’s inaccessible,” Mad Mimi representatives explained in a blog post.

Similar to other companies in its situation, Mad Mimi has refused to give in to the extortion attempt. In an update posted on Monday at 5PM, the company said that it had experienced some intermittent issues, partly because of the security upgrades and downtime suffered by its network provider GNAX.

The company is reaching out to law enforcement.

“Blackmail and extortion don’t stop with acquiescence – it only encourages further attacks. As such, we’ve decided to not play along. By drawing a line, along with others like Meetup and Basecamp who’ve each faced this recently, we’re taking a stand against internet thieves and their attempts to subvert something vital to all of our livelihoods,” Mad Mimi explained.

“We won’t take this lying down and we won’t negotiate with criminals.”

At the beginning of March, the social networking portal Meetup was down for days because of a DDOS attack apparently ordered by a competitor.

Project management software company Basecamp suffered from a similar attack on March 24.

“The attackers tried to extort us for money to make it stop. We refused to give in and worked with our network providers to mitigate the attack the best we could,” David Heinemeier Hansson, the founder and CTO of Basecamp and the creator of Ruby on Rails, noted in a blog post.

We’re not aware of any company that has given in to extortion of this kind. On the other hand, it’s possible that those who do decide to pay up don’t come forward with their stories like Mad Mimi, Basecamp and Meetup.