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Alec Hogg's BizNews website attacked

Cape Town - BizNews.com publisher Alec Hogg believes a cyber attack on his site on Monday evening and Tuesday might be linked to his scoop on the R200bn Belvedere Ponzi scam.

"My experience suggests it has something to do with our stories on the Belvedere Ponzi scandal involving Capetonian Cobus Kellermann and his Mauritius-based partner David Cosgrove," Hogg said in a story on his site. "All in a day’s work, perhaps, when one crosses swords with billionaire Ponzi scheme operators."

He said Biznews.com was subjected to a malicious cyber attack by IP address –196.14.235.18  – which belongs to Europ Assistance. 

"[It] hit the site with tens of thousands of queries – described by our technical team as a flood of 'rubbish traffic – attempting to perform a denial of service attack'.” The IP address used for the attack resides with Internet Solutions, a subsidiary of Dimension Data, itself a subsidiary of Japanese giant NTT.

"Biznews is hosted with a major service provider offshore behind some of the best protection money can buy. But even they struggled to identify why an IP address from  'South Africa, Gauteng, Alberton' hit both of our servers with over 100 000 queries in a matter of minutes."

Hogg wrote on his newsletter on Wednesday that it was virtually impossible to get into the back end.

"Our guru said he'd seen episodes like this launched from China and Russia, but never before from a local IP address. It slowed the site down to a crawl," he wrote.

"Thankfully, most of the country was focused on the cricket. But I still hope Internet Solutions puts its sleuths onto tracking down the perpetrators."

BizNews.com also publishes some of its top stories on Fin24, which has published Hogg's series on the Ponzi scheme.

READ: Capetonian Kellermann accused as kingpin of R200bn Belvedere Ponzi

READ: Alec Hogg: Kellerman’s world starts to unwind

UPDATE:

Since publication of the article above, several regulatory authorities have conducted investigations into the allegations of fraud and of a possible Ponzi scheme and have found as follows:

The Guernsey Financial Services Commission having reviewed their Enforcement Division’s report and accompanying evidence concluded that no further action will be taken and that their proceedings are at an end.

The US based Chartered Financial Analyst Institute stated, after reviewing the information available to them, that their Professional Conduct program decided to close its investigation and to take no disciplinary action, reserving the right to reopen the matter if new information comes to hand.

The Financial Sector Conduct Authority found no evidence of any breaches of the relevant South African financial sector laws.

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