Hackers change their strategy: some of them were so miffed with a target company which managed to lock them out, that they had to use other tactics to hack the security experts off. Security experts at Florida-based TorGuard have defeated a number of powerful DDoS attacks that aimed at crippling their VPN service.

The hackers tried to lock down the TorGuard servers and move them behind the protective services of anti-DDoS service CloudFlare. The company’s admin admitted that the next wave of attacks became more personal. For example, throughout the day, the company received multiple unrequested deliveries of pizza, Chinese food, and even sushi. After dinner, electricians and plumbing services also showed up to solve nonexistent problems. It seems that the hackers didn’t call the cops or fire services only because those could trace their call.

This unusual hacking campaign went on for a couple of months. TorGuard suggests it was carried out by a business rival, as the attack started after a promotional campaign. Within a single day, TorGuard’s support inbox has got torrents of junk e-mails which were spoofed to appear as if they were coming from the company’s own support desk.

The security experts started their investigation. The SMTP servers generating 10,000,000 e-mails per day were in Argentina. A few new rules on the Apache firewall module mod-security were enough to allow the company to successfully block the “mailbomb” attack.

A month later, TorGuard came under another attack, a little more complicated one. The company faces the 10Gbps waves of traffic coming from PowerStresser.com and AvengeStressor.com, which were sending junk traffic only at IP addresses used by the new VPN nodes announced in the company’s promotion newsletter. This meant that the hackers were running the TorGuard service to be able to keep track of the internal servers it used. The company managed to block the assault by modifying the border gateway protocol, which routed the junk traffic into a virtual black hole rather than to the VPN servers.

Finally, the last attack started when TorGuard released new proxy software making it easier for customers to use service with Vuze, uTorrent, and other BitTorrent apps. Apparently, the business rivals had paid for botnets of infected computers this time. TorGuard had to use the anti-DDoS mitigation service CloudFlare to restore its operations. In response, the hackers tried to brute-force crack their e-mail account passwords and make lots of calls to TorGuard’s toll-free support number. When all of that brought no results, pizzas arrived. TorGuard keeps smiling – they love pizza and the company’s security experts managed to create a great secure network for just $800 a month.