Million Dollar Homepage facing extortion

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 18 Jan 2006 at 17:52

It may have been that the criminal fraternity thought this was just too easy a way of making money - tantamount to robbery. But the boy with the million dollar homepage has been hit by extortion attempts and denial of service attacks.

21-year-old Alex Tew's money-spinning brainwave of selling adverts on a web page by the pixel, and at a dollar a dot, finally made the magic million earlier this month, earning him a lot a publicity.

Unfortunately, it seems that having people know you've just made a million dollars is a good way of attracting others that want a piece of that pie.

Just days after revealing his success, Tew received an email demanding $5,000 or risk his cash cow being herded offline with a denial of service attack. The consequences of ignoring that was an attack some three days later, resulting in the site being offline for much of the time until a company specialising in defending against such an onslaught offered its services.

A string of further emails followed, upping the stakes to a final demand of $50,000, but so far, the site has remained available.

Talking to the BBC, Tew said both the UK's NHTCU and the FBI had been contacted about the threats and attacks, and that he was informed the attack may well have originated in Russia.