Bandwidth tools FAQ

What sorts of sites are targeted?

Our bandwidth tools targets fake banking sites, fake lotteries sites and fake security companies. We do not target phishing sites, or ever intend to as their hosts are only usually unaware of their activities for a very short period of time. The websites targeted by our bandwidth tools are well established fraudulent sites that are resilient to all other attempts to have them shut down.

How do the bandwidth tools of aa419 work?

In simple terms, our bandwidth tools download files off verified fake bank and fake lottery sites. When you are running either of the tools, it is downloading an image or html file from the server and when completed starts downloading it again. This will increase the bandwidth usage of the fake site, and hopefully bring it to the attention of the hoster. In many cases, however, the deployment of our bandwidth tools results in the ultimate consumption of the total allotted bandwith of the targeted fake site. Whenever that happens, the site goes off the net automatically.

Is this a DDoS attack and is this legal?

DDoS attacks are covered by various legislations throughout the world. Many countries are still in the dark ages, and have none, if any technological relevant legislation. Current legislation on DDoS attacks generally focuses around individuals or entities intentionally disrupting the normal service of a website or host. Our bandwidth tools download images from these websites the same way a browser does, using the same protocols and the same methods of execution. If we had DDoS in mind (God forbid!), it would be much simpler and a lot more effect to use an application that sends malformed network requests to the servers to cause service disruption.

The intent and net result of having our tools run on several of the computers of our voluntary participants at the same time is to draw the attention of the hosters of the fake site, or the consumption of the site's total allotted monthly bandwidth, respectively, whichever occurs first. See this document for more detailed information.

What protection is there to ensure no DDoS does occur?

Within the logic of the application, if a site is pulled and returns anything other than 200 OK as a response code for accessing the page, each of our tools will stop downloading from that site for a period of time. If the site remains this way, the host will not have the huge bandwidth drain that will occur when the site is up and running.

How are the targets determined?

The targets of our bandwidth tools are always sites which reside on resilient hosters. First off, these are sites that have been investigated by several experienced members of our team, determined and rest assured to be fake. Furthermore, the respective hosting ISPs of these sites have been notified several times about the fraudulent nature of the sites in question and refuse to acknowledge this by taking appropriate action.

Who is authoritive on these fake sites?

It's the law for banks to be registered with the appropriate authorities in the country in which they are located. Even offshore banks are required to have a license! If a bank is not regulated/registered, it means automatically that it is fake, criminal and fraudulent. You can learn more about fake banking sites and how to determine the legitimacy here.

Aren't there better ways to stop these sites?

There are better ways to stop these sites, such as writing complaint letters to the hosters, notifying their upstream providers, notifying the DNS registrars and several other pro-active methods to have these sites shut down. The Artists Against 419 team, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Fake Banks Forum Members have shutdown thousands of sites this way and for every one of the targets of our bandwidth tools we have repeatedly tried the above methods without success.

You can't fight fire with fire - there must be another way!

The team here at Artists Against 419 work tirelessly to have these types of fake sites shut down. Often even identical clones of real banking institutions are an effort to have shut down, so we are open to suggestions. Every one of these targets are targets which are resilient to any sort of legal enforcement. Many are outside the jurisdiction of reasonable legal action. If you have a better way of dealing with these sites, drop us a line in the forum and share it with us.

Related Links

• Is this a legit bank? Online search tools
• Bandwidth Theft