E-Biz sites hit with targeted attacks, extortion threats

E-Biz sites hit with targeted attacks, extortion threats

A distributed denial-of-service attack that disrupted Web-based systems at credit card payment processing firm Authorize.Net Corp. earlier this week is indicative of a sharp increase in the number of cyberattacks being targeted at specific companies and driven by profit motives on the part of the hackers who launch them. (see story)

The DDoS attack against Authorize.Net coincided with the release of a report by IT security software vendor Symantec Corp. ( check my post Horrible factoids ) of this year shows that malicious hackers appear to be moving away from mass attacks to more focused ones aimed at e-commerce sites.