Castlecops, the volunteer security community that runs a
well-known phishing website investigation service, has been hit by
a denial of service attack.
The latest phase in an ongoing botnet powered onslaught that began
on 13 February rendered the site largely inaccessible on Monday (19
February).
By Tuesday, the website returned albeit without the restoration of
all its services. "We're under a DDoS, but we will prevail. Good
shall overcome," Castlecops's principal Paul Laudanski said on a
posting on the site's website.
Founded five years ago, CastleCops is best known for its Phish
Incident Reporting and Termination (PIRT) taskforce. Surfers are
able to report fraudulent sites to Castlecops volunteers, who
investigate these reports. Castlecops volunteers do the leg work
and carry out the sometimes tricky process of having bogus sites
removed from the internet. The organisation also assists in
educating users about malware risks.
The motives of the attack are unclear, though it's reasonable to
assume the phishing fraudsters or malware authors, who have most to
gain from the inavailability of Castecop's website, are the likely
perpetrators.
Castlecops has become the latest target in a string of attacks
targeting organisations looking to frustrate the efforts of
phishing fraudsters, spammers, or other internet pond life.
Veteran spam fighter Spamhaus suffered a denial of service attack
last September, for example, while an attack by a rogue spammer
brought down anti-spam firm Blue Security in April 2006.
According to Blue Security, a renegade Russian language speaking
spammer known as PharmaMaster succeeded in bribing a staff member
at a top-tier ISP into black-holing Blue Security's former IP
address at internet backbone routers.
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Actually, have been down for more than a week... it has been going
through ups and downs.
Those who are checking for phished websites, checking for viruses
will not be able to access there...
Some sites to check out since Castlecops is unavailable...
PhishTank
Greatis
Application Database
Spyware Guide
Hijackfree Process List
Hijackfree Autorun List
Bleeping Computer Startup List
Bleeping Computer List of Uninstallable Bad
Programs
Bleeping Computer File Database
Process
Library
PC
Tools Spyware Doctor Infections Database
Sunbelt Research
Sysinfo
BHO List
Sysinfo Startup List
Good Processes
