Kim Dotcom Stops Xbox and Playstation Attacks

So, any group of kids with access to one-click DDOS tools can extort $300,000USD worth of services out of a business by attacking large networks?<p>Is Kim really that proud of this precedent?<p>Will a $300k ransom be enough next time?<p>Maybe that&#x27;s the future of high uptime public networks, an understanding that millions or even tens of millions per year must be set aside for bribes.<p>Sounds a bit like driving through a corrupt country where one must keep bribes on hand at all times to ensure non-molested travel.

This kind of stuff is really upsetting. If you don&#x27;t want people to do this kind of thing, you have to not encourage them. Even if they are all arrested, others will see this. And think, Hey I can get a reward for doing this stuff.<p>A 10 sec look at their twitter feed will tell you that they are doing this primarily to make a name for themselves. They want to be famous.<p>Yet what does every single news outlet do? Plaster their groups name all over every story. Even the BBC goes to mention them by name. Which is only going to encourage this behavior.

The attacks against the Playstation Network have slowed, but PSN is still offline in the US.<p>I&#x27;m curious about the nature of these attacks. Are they using sheer network traffic or are they tying up the authentication servers with bogus requests? Has anyone seen a good technical description of what&#x27;s happening?

Looks like Mega requires an email address for account creation (and activation?). I&#x27;m sure many of these folks will be using disposable accounts, but some of them will probably use an email address that can be traced back, particularly if they&#x27;re thinking in terms of keeping a lifetime account.<p>Seems to me that the list of email addresses associated with the 3000 lifetime account activations would be fair game for civil or criminal subpoenas.

Is there any reason to believe this wasnt for publicity and to get his message about diplomacy out? He definitely has the resources to do this.

On one hand I don&#x27;t like the idea of surrendering to criminals, especially when you&#x27;re giving them some kind of compensation, but on the other hand it&#x27;s likely most or all of them will be arrested in the not-so-distant future. It&#x27;s probably a net benefit if you appease them in the short term so they can cause as little damage as possible before they end up going away for good.

Given Kim his past there is no reason to not believe he is not behind this by either 1) seeding it for publicity or 2) working with law enforcement (those accounts will be used&#x2F;sold once).

There are reports of people still having difficulties accessing PSN. I don&#x27;t know if Sony&#x27;s network needs more time to recover or what the deal is at this point.

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;<p><pre><code> But we&#x27;ve proved it again and again, </code></pre> That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld<p><pre><code> You never get rid of the Dane.</code></pre>

Haters gonna hate, but I think it was a cool thing Kim Dotcom did. I think it&#x27;s time to put my Mega account to use.