Bobbear targeted by cybercriminals

A site that aims to warn the public of fraudulent emails and other online scams has been attacked by cybercriminals.

According to security experts, the Bobbear.co.uk site was hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack recently. This is where a website's servers are deliberately overwhelmed with traffic, putting it out of action.

Bobbear is a British site and has been a target for cybercriminals before. The site contains hundreds of pages of warnings about email frauds.

"It's appalling to see cybercriminals launch such a dirty attack on a voluntary organisation that is actually doing something positive to make the internet a safer place - it just goes to show how unscrupulous these crooks are," said Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.

"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," Sophos continued.

As of 1445GMT on Monday, the site still appeared to be having problems. A spokesman for Bobbear said that it had been under attack from a "huge" botnet and there had been half a million attempts to access the site between midnight to 0800 this morning.

www.bobbear.co.uk
www.sophos.com

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