Website offers £10,000 bounty for internet crooks

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 23 Jan 2009 at 08:29

Overclockers.co.uk is offering a £10,000 bounty for anybody who hands in those responsible for the denial-of-service attacks on its servers, as the internet lives up to its "wild west" billing.

The enthusiast site made the offer on a forum posting, after claiming the attacks had disrupted its service for the last ten days.

"OcUK servers have been subject to sustained DDoS attacks that have disrupted our on-line store and forums servers. Instigating these kind of attacks is a serious criminal offence and whilst we have strong suspicions who is behind them we need more evidence," reads the post.

"I am offering £10,000 to anyone who can provide evidence that leads to a conviction. The evidence must be something that SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency) can use. If you do reveal your identity we will only disclose it to the Police with your permission. In the meantime, think about what £10K could do for you right now."

The site administrators claim that while the attacks had disrupted server uptime, they had not compromised site security.

The cash reward seems to bear out the findings of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee which described the internet as a "wild west" increasingly perceived as outside the law.