Security News > 2020 > August > DDoS Extorters Claim to Be Armada Collective, Fancy Bear
Cybercriminals claiming to represent well-known threat groups such as Fancy Bear and Armada Collective have been threatening organizations with distributed denial of service attacks, Akamai warns.
Similar to extortion groups that operated in the past, the attackers would contact victim companies warning them of an imminent DDoS attack on their infrastructure, unless a ransom was paid.
"If you report this to media and try to get some free publicity by using our name, instead of paying, attack will start permanently and will last for a long time.," an extortion letter supposedly coming from Armada Collective reads.
The group claiming to be Armada Collective asks victims to pay a 5 BTC ransom, or 10 BTC after the deadline is reached.
In some of the letters, the attackers claim to be able to launch DDoS attacks of up to 2 Tbps. According to Akamai, the extortion attempts are likely the work of copycat groups, and not that of the two well-known adversaries.