The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Hackers take Silk Road website down in DDoS attack

Author

By John Glenday, Reporter

May 2, 2013 | 1 min read

A massive denial of service (DDoS) attack has taken down the Silk Road, a hidden drugs black market which grants users full anonymity, after being blackmailed by hacker going by the name of ‘Lance G’ who threatened to unleash a flood of spam traffic to the site unless he was paid $5k.

Instead Silk Road administrators are offering $5k to anyone with ‘information that leads to the arrest and conviction of whoever is behind this extortion attempt’.

Rumours circulating on the web have seen conspiracy theorists whip themselves into a frenzy with suggestions that the authorities may be behind the attack to cut down on online drug dealing.

A more prosaic explanation may rely on the sites dependence on Bitcoin, the digital currency which has experienced enormous see-saws in its value over recent months, together with a number of major scams, combining to deter buyers and sellers.

Silk Road is one of the main markets for Bitcoins and any damage to it could take down the popular digital currency with it. It is hidden on the so-called 'deep web', accessible only by specialist browsers.

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +