“Security researchers noticed a new twist in a recent spate of distributed denial-of-service attacks—when servers are overwhelmed to knock a site or service offline. This rash of incidents, known as memcached reflection attacks, have included ransom demands hidden within the attack payload, internet services company Akamai researchers revealed in a blog post Friday. “

Source: Hackers Figured Out a Way to Demand Ransom Without Sending Email – Nextgov