Fraud Files

Margot Loveseth got a scare last Halloween when her online store, costumechik.com, suddenly went black. Loveseth started the retail website in 2004 to complement her Calgary storefront called The Costume Shoppe. When she decided to branch out to the Internet, she didn’t realize that she might attract the attention of cyber-terrorists in Ukraine and Russia in the process.

“Some people spend a lot of time thinking of creative ways to steal and cheat people,” says Sgt. Jeff Cameron of the RCMP’s Integrated Technological Crime Unit in Edmonton. He says these types of “botnet” attacks can significantly increase the load times of a website or bring it down altogether.

The timing of the cyber attack on costumechik.com was costly, since about 40 per cent of the company’s revenue is earned during the weeks leading up to Halloween. “It crippled us for eight days, and I estimate the result to be [a loss of] about $80,000,” Loveseth says.

She has plans to spend a lot more money this year on Internet security, both software and hardware. “It’s definitely worth it if you’re doing any kind of volume.”

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