HOLLYWOOD, Fla., Oct. 3, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Prolexic, the global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection services, announced today that it recently mitigated high-volume Layer 3 DDoS attacks directed at BidCactus.com, a popular online auction site. Due to the success of the emergency provisioning, BidCactus has signed a contract with Prolexic for ongoing DDoS detection and DDoS protection.
The DDoS attacks spanned two days and rendered BidCactus.com inaccessible to millions of global bidders for six hours. The site's hosting company recommended Prolexic for DDoS mitigation services after its efforts failed to stop the denial of service attacks. BidCactus.com management received a ransom demand from the denial of service attackers for several thousand Euros in exchange for stopping the DDoS attacks, but management refused to pay.
"Although any company with an online presence is vulnerable to a DDoS attack, e-Commerce companies are favorite targets for attackers who threaten with extortion," said Stuart Scholly, president at Prolexic. "BidCactus.com is typical of most online companies who will not give in to attackers' ransom demands. Now, with DDoS protection from Prolexic in place, the auction site will no longer have to worry about dealing with cyber criminals."
A small attack started in the early evening and lasted for approximately two hours before subsiding. The site experienced a stronger and more lethal DDoS attack the following morning around 10 a.m. The denial of service DDoS attack overwhelmed the site's firewall capabilities. When the site's hosting provider exhausted its resources to try to stop the attack, the provider nullrouted or blackholed BidCactus.com in order to protect other hosted sites. This resulted in a six-hour outage during which BidCactus.com was unable to conduct business.
"It's difficult to put a dollar value on an outage, but it was definitely significant in terms of our reputation," said Jeffrey Dvornek, director of technology at BidCactus.com. "Prolexic responded to our initial request for help with great speed and our site was back online almost immediately. And after Prolexic took over, the DDoS attackers never returned."
Prolexic quickly mitigated the DDoS attack on BidCactus.com using its PLXproxy DDoS mitigation service. This is the quickest way to provision Prolexic's mitigation and protection against all types and sizes of DDoS attacks. Any disruption to the site or downtime is typically resolved in just minutes.
"My advice to other online businesses would be to secure DDoS protection," said Dvornek. "The cost of denying service to a site is shockingly low. Everyone can be a target and anyone can be a potential DDoS attacker."
The infrastructure (Layer 3) attack on BidCactus.com reflects the trend toward "back to basics" DoS and DDoS attacks being favored by DDoS attackers, according to the findings of the Q2 2012 Prolexic Global DDoS Attack Report. A complimentary copy of the report is available for download at www.prolexic.com/attackreports.
To learn more about the DDoS attack launched against BidCactus.com, download the full case study at www.prolexic.com/bidcactus.
About Prolexic
Prolexic Technologies is the world's largest, most trusted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection and mitigation service provider. Able to absorb the largest and most complex DDoS attacks ever launched, Prolexic protects and restores within minutes mission-critical Internet-facing infrastructures for global enterprises and government agencies. Ten of the world's largest banks and the leading companies in e-Commerce, SaaS, payment processing, travel, hospitality, gaming and other industries at risk for DDoS attacks rely on Prolexic for DDoS protection. Founded in 2003 as the world's first in-the-cloud DDoS mitigation platform, Prolexic is headquartered in Hollywood, Florida, and has DDoS scrubbing centers located in the Americas, Europe and Asia. To learn more about how Prolexic can stop DDoS attacks and protect your business, please visit prolexic.com, and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and @Prolexic on Twitter.
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