The company, Praemium Portfolio Services, said the AFP had not acted on information passed to it about the attacks, which have to date lasted for several weeks. Praemium said its own security team had traced the attacks back to a specific Internet address based in Western Australia and had included this detail in the information.
Managing director, Arthur Naoumidis said he was disappointed in the response, although he claimed his company had been "easily" able to fend off the repeated assaults on its system.
"Someone's out there trying to take us offline for whatever reason, and they should be stopped," he told ZDNet Australia :.
The company is understood to believe the fact the attacks are repetitive and originate from within the country indicates the likely motivation is sabotage.
"These attacks are the physical equivalent of someone trying to throw bricks through our shop-front window and nothing is being done," Naoumidis said.
Praemium's business is all online; they offer a do-it-yourself service for investors. Users of Praemium's systems manage their investment portfolio through a web interface.
Online investment companies in Australia have been targeted in the past. In July 2001 Online Trading Systems, an Australian company specialising in real-time stock-market information, were hacked and 40,000 of their customer records were compromised.
The security breach was catastrophic to their business as not only had company information been exposed, but their production servers were riddled with Trojans that made them completely unstable.
Naoumidis was keen to assert that no Praemium client data has been accessed. "We operate very secure systems, our whole system was built with security as a top-priority from day one," he said.
"No client data has been or will be exposed," he added.
DOS attacks are among the least sophisticated on the Internet. they are simply designed to knock a server offline through use of brute force tactics, such as placing a large load on the system under attack.
Naoumidis indicated the company would be unlikely to pursue the issue without the assistance of the authorities, claiming civil action against any alleged attacker could cost a fortune.
"We shouldn't have to pursue this, the authorities should," Naoumidis said.
A public relations officer for the AFP said that they are assessing Praemium's statement in order to determine if any Australian law has been broken, and if the investigation is one that they are willing to take on.
"The impression I got is that they're under-resourced," Naoumidis said.
