Banxso denies any links to attacks, emails and threats.
Moneyweb’s website has been the victim of massive sporadic cyberattacks and extortionary demands linked to our reportage of possible ties between Banxso and fake investment schemes using the identities of business icons such as Johann Rupert, Elon Musk and Nicky Oppenheimer.
The attacks, which started on Monday (1 April), specifically target the two articles Moneyweb published about Banxso onboarding people who registered on the fake ads promising monthly returns of up to R300 000 on a once-off R4 800 investment as clients.
Moneyweb’s IT team and service provider have blocked the attacks.
These two articles are:
Banxso – beneficiary or victim of ‘R4 800’ Musk and Rupert scams?
Banxso is still registering clients who click on fake ads
On Tuesday, Moneyweb received an email stating that the attacks would continue until the two articles were removed. Moneyweb also received another extortionary email from the same address, threatening that the Moneyweb domain would be “closed” if the articles were not deleted.
Banxso denies any involvement
Manuel de Andrade, Banxso’s COO, denied any involvement when approached for comment. “Banxso is not involved in any way with these emails, attacks, and threats. We refer you to our previous correspondence in which we answered your questions about supposed links with online scams and comprehensively explained that there is no such link that exists. As you are aware, we have approached the Press Council for relief on this matter.”
(Moneyweb will defend the complaint laid with the Ombud.)
Banxso is registered with the FSCA and sponsors UFC champion Dricus du Plessis and Bafana Bafana.
Manuel De Andrade, Banxso’s general manager. Image: Moneyweb
DDoS attack
Monday’s cyber attack was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted website by overwhelming it with a flood of Internet traffic.
The first attack commenced on the evening of 1 April and lasted for nearly 12 hours. A second attack followed on 2 April and lasted for more than 8 hours.
Both attacks collectively overwhelmed our systems with 1.015 billion requests overall, with the majority (945 million or 93%) of these requests targeting the two Banxso articles.
‘Remove the articles, and the attacks will stop’
Moneyweb received an unsigned email proposing a “deal” that would see the termination of the attacks after the articles were removed.
“We’ve just attacked your site and will keep it down until we get to an agreement, please let us know whether you will be accepting a deal, or we will keep your blog down.
This attack will not stop until further notice In exchange of our deal we will let your website operational again completely the same as before. We definitely do not accept any excuses nor will we consider any other option. Once the action we propose has been carried out, respond to this email and we will stop the attack mentioned here immediately (sic),” the email read.
Closure of the Moneyweb domain
Moneyweb also received an email from the same email address earlier, which was signed by “Joe Gryn” from the “Proton Netscape Team”.
This email threatened Moneyweb with the closure of our domain if the two articles were not removed within 72 hours.
“We are seeking your assistance in removing an outdated and false news article you published on your website,” Gryn wrote and included links to the two articles.
“This article (sic) needs to be fully removed from your website and archives as we have escalated this case to Netscape and they will suspend your entire domain incase the article is not removed immediately.
“Please confirm the article has been removed and the case will automatically dismiss itself in Netscape, if the article is not removed from your website in the next 72 hours the case will move forward for a closure of your entire domain and you will have to take it with ICANN to restore it, which is on its own a case that ICANN dont get involved in.”
“Netscape has already issued instructions to interfere with the domain’s being online , so you may already see phases of your website stops functioning.” (sic)
Netscape was a leading internet company in the 1990s but closed its doors in the 2000s. Moneyweb could not find any reference to an active company with a similar name.
Moneyweb stands by its reportage on Banxso and will not delete the articles.
* Any investors who have lost or made money on the Banxso platform are welcome to contact me at ryk@moneyweb.co.za.
