Groonk[dot]Net ಠ_ಠ

Tew gulped. “I felt gutted,” he recalls. He had a good idea who “they” were. The week before, he had received an email from Dark Group, hackers who threatened a coordinated strike unless he paid $5,000 by January 10. The message read: “[It’s] not much money, from the news we heard about you and the amount of money you earned via your Web site.”

Tew was being extorted – an experience that is becoming more and more common in cyberspace. A rash of such attacks against gambling sites first swept the Net in 2004. Now, according to a survey by InformationWeek and Carnegie Mellon University, 17 percent of small and midsize businesses report being targeted. But Tew cockily shrugged off the extortionists. He wasn’t some broke kid from the sticks anymore; he was a self-made millionaire man.

The Dark Group called his bluff. “Hello u website is under us attack,” they emailed, with a demand for $50,000. “if u pay we do not ddos u site even again! and u hava a nice life :)” Given his promise to advertisers, an outage could get him sued. That’s when Tew’s entrepreneurial instinct kicked in. He struck a deal with a Web security company, which agreed to protect his site in exchange for a plug in Tew’s blog. The page went live again. The FBI started an investigation.

“Perhaps the attackers have inadvertently done me a favour!” Tew later blogged. Word of the hit had increased his site’s traffic, proving one of the great axioms of business: There’s no such thing as bad PR. The pixelpreneur is now doing speaking engagements, writing an ebook, and developing a TV show about his experience.