What began as a combination of rumor and message board edginess may have been a lot more real than first suspected - a hacker calling himself Deepsy who has been threatening various adult Webmasters to either pay up or face their sites being crashed, including demands for a reported $1,500 each from three different sites.
The toll thus far, according to Wired - several adult sites, which the magazine didn't name, being taken offline temporarily, within the ten days since the first threats, after being "battered by massive denial-of-service attacks."
It started June 30 at the highest-visibility adult Webmaster message board, gofuckyourself.com, when Deepsy threatened to cripple that site within 20 minutes and that GFY Webmasters were to contact him for "further instructions," according to Wired.
Apparently, the GFY members talking on the boards at the time thought it was a gag, but Wired said that within 20 minutes, the board was down, with the attack called off after an hour. But Deepsy repeated his order to GFY and began threatening other sites, the magazine added.
Some of the targeted Webmasters were only told, "You're next," Wired said, with not all the real or suspected targets receiving money demands. But as AVN Online editor-in-chief Tom Hymes told Wired, "Engaging in this level of extortion – I've never seen that before. It's a disturbing development."
The magazine said at least one adult Webmaster, unnamed, contacted the FBI, while others were gathering electronic defenses and still more were "plotting ways to take revenge against the assailant – methods that don't involve a keyboard or a mouse." And ConsumptionJunction.com's Rick Latona has offered a $2,000 reward for any information about Deepsy or whomever attacked their site.
Still others managed to deflect Deepsy without having to pay him a cent – like Nightbucks.com Webmaster Jay Jay, who told Wired Deepsy backed off after Jay Jay spoke of rent payment and child support struggles.
Even so, there remain problems even for those who'd like to take the usual route in bringing Deepsy to heel. "It's hard for the adult industries to go to the authorities," one Webmaster told Wired. "Try going to the FBI computer crimes division and saying you run analsex.com."
