Hackers attack UK student's web site

　 Alex Tew

A Web site that earned an enterprising British student, named Alex Tew, $1 million suffered a crippling attack by ransom-seeking hackers.

Alex Tew, 21, said that his Million Dollar Homepage was targeted after he publicized how it had helped him raise money for his university studies.

Tew had sold 10,000 small squares of advertising space on the Web site for $100 each, achieving his target in four months. His initiative spawned several copycat sites.

But Tew said that on Jan. 7, he received a threat from an organization calling itself "The Dark Group," demanding that he pay them $50,000 within 72 hours or face having his site taken down.

"It was written in poor English, but the hackers asked for $50,000, saying that it was just 5 percent of what I had made," Tew said. "I did not reply to the e-mail. I had no intention of paying."

Tew ignored the threat. Hackers then initiated a so-called distributed denial of service, in which attackers take command of third-party computers, through a virus or other security vulnerability, and instruct them to send junk data to the target site, overwhelming servers and causing the site to crash or perform poorly.

Tew said the site now works normally.

Tew, from Wiltshire, a county in southern England, said he informed the FBI because his site is hosted in the United States.

FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the agency was investigating.

Such extortion cases targeting Web sites are occurring with greater frequency.

一名英国学生的个人网站遭到敲诈未果的"黑客"的严重袭击，创建该网站的就是颇具创业精神的亚历克斯·图，他通过自己的个人网站赚取了100万美元。

21岁的亚历克斯·图说他公布了自己如何通过网站筹集大学学费的故事，随后他的百万美元网站主页就受到了攻击。

图在他的网页上划分出1万个小格子，并以每格100美元的价格出售广告空间。他仅用了四个月的时间就实现了自己"一百万美元"的目标。而他的创意也引来数家网站争相效仿。

图说，1月7日那天，他收到一个自称为"黑色组织"发来的威胁邮件，要挟他在72小时内给交出5万美元，否则他的网站就保不住了。

图说，"邮件是用英文写的，但英语很差。不过黑客明确提出要5万美元，还说这只是我赚到的5%。我没有回邮件，也不打算拿出这笔钱。"

图对"黑色组织"的威胁并没有太在意。随即，黑客们就采取了所谓"分布式拒绝服务"的攻击，该攻击利用病毒或其它安全缺陷控制傀儡机，并指引傀儡机向攻击目标发送垃圾数据包，以击垮服务器，导致网站瘫痪或运行不畅。

图说，网站现在已经恢复正常了。

来自英国南部威尔特郡的图说，他向美国联邦调查局报了案，因为他网站的主机设在美国。

美国联邦调查局发言人保尔·布里森说，联邦调查局正在调查这起事件。

这种敲诈勒索网站的案发率越来越高。