May 10, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The FBI is investigating the claims of a Kentucky business owner who appears to have been the target of a cyber-extortion, according to the Associated Press.
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Jay Broder, the owner of CSI Mid-South, also known as Card Solutions International, claimed his company's Web site (authorizeit.com) went down for about a week after he refused to pay $10,000 to the sender of the email extortion threat. The email threatened to cripple the site if the money was not sent. Broder said in the report that he thought the threats were idle and believed the emails to be spam. He said he is not aware of any reason why he would be targeted.
The alleged attack, unleashed a few hours after Broder received a second threatening email, was a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), an assault that overloads a system with a flood of incoming messages forcing it to shut down.
According to the Courier-Journal, CSI Mid-South's Web site is hosted with Boston-based Web hosting provider Hosting.com (hosting.com), who did not return requests for comment. Broder said the attacks stopped when he switched Web hosting providers and got a new IP address.
Card Solutions International processes credit card payments online.
