BBC was hit with the biggest-ever DDoS attack

There’s a good chance that the recent DDoS attack against the BBC was the biggest one, yet. That depends on whether the hackers behind the attack are exaggerating or not.

According to a CSO Online report, the hackers claimed the attack on the BBC website, which occurred on New Year’s Eve, reached 602Gbps. If that turns out to be true, that will be almost twice the size of the current biggest attack which sits at 334Gbps.

The hackers, going by the name New World Hacking, could be exaggerating, the report says. It’s still early to confirm or deny these claims.

The group claimed the attack was only a test and that it didn’t plan on taking the site down for hours. It also attacked Donald Trump’s website, but added that it plans on attacking ISIS-related websites.

There are different opinions as to why the group chose BBC and Donald Trump as their main targets at this time, and the most popular opinion is that it’s doing so to draw attention. Rene Paap, product marketing manager at A10 Networks, a security vendor that helps protect companies against DDoS attacks, believes the group might actually be promoting its DDoSing tool -- the BangStresser. The DDoS tool can be used as a service.

A similar thing was done by another hacking group, Lizard Squad, when it promoted its Lizard Stressor. "There are a lot of parallels here", he said.

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