Should geo-blocking be an option for DDoS prevention?
2016 should have reinforced what security experts have been telling us over the years. Cyberattacks are not a matter of "if" anymore but "when."
Last year, there was no such thing as "too big to fail" as top tech firms like Yahoo!, Dropbox, and LinkedIn all reported data breaches. Internet services provider Dyn, which is used by Twitter and Spotify, was also hit with traffic-based attacks, affecting uptime of these popular sites. Banks and government institutions also fell victim to attacks that compromised information of millions of users -- a bank in Sri Lanka even lost billions of dollars to spoofed international transactions.
Lloyds bank hit by DDoS attack
The Lloyds Banking Group fell victim to a massive cyberattack this week, that was responsible for temporarily disrupting its services.
The attack is being attributed to an international hacking group. It launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against the company's online services that lasted for two days. During this time, customers were reportedly unable to make payments online or check their account balances.
US Federal Trade Commission sues D-Link for having terrible security
D-Link is facing a lawsuit brought against it by the US Federal Trade Commission for the poor security of its routers and connected cameras. The FTC says the company failed to take reasonable steps to protect users from hackers.
The FTC is seeking to improve the security of all IoT (internet of things) devices in the wake of compromised devices being used to launch high-profile DDoS attacks such as Marai and Leet Botnet. D-Link argues that the charges brought against it are "unwarranted and baseless" and plans to "vigorously defend itself".
Many businesses are relying on others to fight DDoS attacks
With large scale cyber attacks constantly hitting the headlines, businesses ought to be aware of the need to protect themselves.
But a new study by Kaspersky Lab shows that 40 percent of businesses are unclear on how to protect themselves against targeted attacks and DDoS.
How DDoS attacks evolved in the past 20 years
In September 1996 New York City’s original Internet Service Provider, Panix, was hit by a SYN flood denial of service attack that took the company offline for several days. At a time when only 20 million Americans were online this was one of the first high profile examples of how fragile internet infrastructure could be.
Fast forward 20 years and businesses and individuals are now hugely dependent on the Internet services they both offer and use, and the primary threat to the availability of those Internet is the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. DDoS attacks have evolved consistently over the last 20 years and have moved from being a curiosity, to a nuisance, and, now, to a serious business continuity risk.
Bigger than Mirai: Leet Botnet delivers 650 Gbps DDoS attack with 'pulverized system files'
Earlier in the year, a huge DDoS attack was launched on Krebs on Security. Analysis showed that the attack pelted servers with 620 Gbps, and there were fears that the release of the Mirai source code used to launch the assault would lead to a rise in large-scale DDoS attacks. Welcome Leet Botnet.
In the run-up to Christmas, security firm Imperva managed to fend off a 650 Gbps DDoS attack. But this was nothing to do with Mirai; it is a completely new form of malware, but is described as "just as powerful as the most dangerous one to date". The concern for 2017 is that "it's about to get a lot worse".
Points mean prizes in gamified DDoS platform
Gamification is increasingly used by business as a means of enhancing the usability of software. But now it seems hackers are exploiting the technique too.
Researchers at threat protection company Forcepoint have uncovered a DDoS package being shared on Turkish hacking forums employing a gamified approach.
Amazon launches DDoS protection service AWS Shield
Following the massive attack that took down the servers of the DNS service provider Dyn and a number of high profile websites including Netflix, Twitter, Spotify and Reddit last month, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a new technology to protect sites against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
The new tool, which is called AWS Shield, was announced at the company's re:Invent developer event in Las Vegas. Amazon's own site was affected by the attack on Dyn and the company has now decided to launch its own DDoS protection service to ensure that its site and those that use AWS are able to withstand future attacks.
Kaspersky: DDoS attacks are a smokescreen
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks make a lot of noise, and according to a new Kaspersky Lab report, that’s exactly what hackers are using them for.
As businesses are preoccupied with handling DDoS attacks, hackers use the opportunity for another, more targeted, and more deadly type of attack. Basically, DDoS is nothing more than a smokescreen. The conclusion comes in Kaspersky Lab’s report, which polled businesses about their cybersecurity experiences. More than half (56 percent) say DDoS is being used to cover something else.
'BlackNurse' DDoS attack targets firewalls vulnerable to ping flood
Security researchers have discovered a new distributed denial of service (DDoS) method that requires less effort to launch large-scale attacks that can bring down servers or firewalls from a single laptop.
The new method of launching DDoS attacks called BlackNurse was discovered by researchers at the Security Operations Center of the Danish telecom operator TDC (TDC SOC). It operates by using attacks based on low volume Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) to overload firewalls to the point where they shut down.
Don't take part in a DDoS botnet
DDoS attacks have been at the forefront of the media for weeks. The unprecedented scale of the attacks on Brian Krebs website lit the powder keg, and it hasn’t stopped, with the most recent example being the attack on Dyn’s servers that led to a major outage on the east coast of the US.
As The Register reported, the Krebs attack was the largest known single DDoS attack ever, with more than 152K devices involved, generating more than 620Gbps in the attack. The Dyn attack received even more coverage, as it affected many popular consumer sites, including media-friendly Twitter.
Number of DDoS attacks down but speed and size increases
The number of DDoS attacks fell more than 40 percent to 97,700 attacks in the second quarter of 2016 according to the latest threat report from DDoS security service Nexusguard.
The report reveals there was a sharp dip in distributed reflection denial of service (DrDoS) attacks, with DNS-based attacks falling 97 percent compared to the previous quarter. However, recent DDoS attacks on cybercrime journalist Brian Krebs and OVH, a French internet hosting provider, broke records for speed and size.
Inventor of DNS on the DYN attack: 'DDoS threatens our values and freedoms, as well as our surfing'
Imagine standing in line at a coffee shop, the place is brimming with people all shouting their order at the one overwhelmed barista. You place your order but he can’t hear you. You shout it, you scream it over the din of the thousands of people also ordering their coffee, but the barista just shrugs because he can’t get your order much less process it. No coffee for you. As you leave you realize those thousands of other customers aren’t even customers, they were just noise generated to keep you from getting your coffee.
Welcome to DDoS.
Dyn DDoS attack used Chinese firm's unsecured IoT devices
Following the large scale cyberattack that took down a number of high-profile sites last Friday, a Chinese electronics component manufacturer has admitted that its products were used by the attackers behind the disruption.
Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology, which produces DVRs and internet-connect cameras, has come forward to acknowledge that its products were exploited and that the attackers had taken advantage of security vulnerabilities resulting from weak default passwords.
Mirai botnet code used to launch DDoS attack on Krebs On Security leaks online
Fears are mounting that there could soon be a rise in large scale DDoS attacks after the source code used to launch the recent crippling attack on Krebs On Security was shared on a hacker forum.
Brian Krebs' website was hit by what has been described as the largest ever DDos attack recently, and the Mirai botnet source code has now been made available for anyone to make use of. The style of attack is particularly interesting as it involves using compromised Internet of Things devices such as webcams and other connected IoT hardware.
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