November 24, 2008

Web User



Crime The Bobbear.co.uk website, a not-for-profit project that lists details of phishing scams and other types of online attacks, has been out of action for the weekend.



The downtime comes after a previous attack on the site last week was blamed on cybercriminals based in Russia.



Bob Harrison, the man behind Bobbear.co.uk, told Web User: "We're still looking into why the site has been down over the weekend - details are a little hazy at the moment."



He said that the site was being "hit very hard" on Friday 21 November and that it appeared that another DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack had knocked the site out a little before 2100GMT.



Harrison told Web User that the company that hosts the site was looking into the causes of the problem and the Metropolitan Police were also monitoring the site.



Bobbear.co.uk had also suffered a DDoS attack the previous weekend, which had been traced back to a Russian domain. The location of the source of the new attack has not yet been discovered.



Sophos' Graham Cluley said that the fact that cybercriminals were targetting the site proved how effective it had been.



"The only consolation that Bobbear can take from this situation is that they must be having an impact on the fraudsters if they are prepared to go to such lengths to put the site out of operation," he said.



UPDATE 1545GMT: The Bobbear.co.uk site is up and running again.



Source: http://www.webuser.co.uk/news/272741.html



