DDoS Ransom: An Offer You Can Refuse
Cloudflare has covered DDoS ransom groups several times in the past. First, we reported on the copycat group claiming to be the Armada Collective and then not too long afterwards, we covered the "new" Lizard Squad. While in both cases the groups made threats that were ultimately empty, these types of security events can send teams scrambling to determine the correct response. Teams in this situation can choose from three types of responses: pay the ransom and enable these groups to continue their operations, not pay and hope for the best, or prepare an action plan to get protected.
Breaking the Ransom Cycle
We can’t stress enough that you should never pay the ransom. We fully understand that in the moment when your website is being attacked it might seem like a reasonable solution, but by paying the ransom, you only perpetuate the DDoS ransom group’s activities and entice other would be ransomers to start making similar threats. In fact, we have seen reports of victim organizations receiving multiple subsequent threats after they have paid the ransom. It would seem these groups are sharing lists of organizations that pay, and those organizations are more likely to be targeted again in Continue reading
But what if you cannot, for some reason, disperse the attack? Maybe you only have two edge connections, or if the size of the DDoS is larger than your total edge bandwidth combined? It is typically difficult to mitigate a DDoS attack, but there is an escalating chain of actions you can take that often prove useful. Let’s deal with local mitigation techniques first, and then consider some fancier methods.
It can be deployed wherever customers have server infrastructure.
The companies plan to eventually expand the offering into global markets.