Cyberattack Takes Down Amazon, Twitter, Netflix and Others

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groveChuck

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Friday 5:30 pm

Internet traffic company Dyn on Friday warned a third cyberattack is currently ongoing, hours after websites and services across the East Coast were initially shut down Friday morning.

The DDoS attacks are "well planned and executed, coming from tens of millions of IP addresses at the same time."

A senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News the current assessment is that this is a classic case of internet vandalism. The official said it does not appear at this point to be any kind of state-sponsored or directed attack. Impossible to say how long it will take to say who's responsible, the official added.

Dyn told CNBC that one of the sources of the attack is coming from devices known as the "Internet of Things" devices such as DVRs, Printers, and appliances connected to the internet.

The company said in a conference call Friday afternoon that the attack is being waged from devices infected with a malware code that was released on the web in recent weeks.

Dyn said it has not heard from attackers and does not know who they are.

"What they're actually doing is moving around the world with each attack."

Many prominent websites including Amazon, Twitter and Spotify were shut down for nearly two hours Friday morning by an earlier denial of service attack.
CNBC.com was also affected. Amazon reported later that it was once again having service issues but resolved the problem.

Later in the day, Netflix and PayPal reported that they are experiencing issues, while Spotify and said some of its members were having trouble accessing their website.


http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/21/majo...oast-knocked-out-in-apparent-ddos-attack.html
 
Very odd. If I click on a Vimeo link in this forum atm I'm also getting three redirects before it hits the Vimeo link. Related?
 
This all stems from Internet of Things devices (IP cameras, smart thermostats, etc.). If you use a weak password, or especially the default password, they can be easily compromised. At that point, the attacker commands them to direct web traffic to the target or targets and they are quickly overloaded. This series of attacks emanated from tens of millions of IP addresses. This is just the beginning, as more people buy these things and don't secure them.
 
Noel, not sure if Vimeo problems are related.
Horse- exactly. I didn't know a lot about these things, but in doing several shoots for web security company Akamai, I learned about DDos attacks.
Now, instead of needing computers to conduct these attacks, they have the proliferation of smart devices just waiting to be taken over and used to launch millions of attacks.
The question remains, why? For the thrill of it? And what happens if they bombard election sites?
 
I've seen it used for revenge against people who out these criminals. For instance, Akamai used to protect KrebsOnSecurity.com which is a great infosec website with really smart reporting. He was able to figure out the identities of two Israeli guys behind the vDos DDos-for-hire group just before they were arrested. Hours later, he got hit with a massive attack that hit more than 600Gbps, which was the largest attack ever recorded at that time. They had to drop him (they were providing that service pro bono) because it became too expensive. He is now part of the Google Shield project. Good luck getting through that defense system. :)

This is only going to get worse. You're absolutely right. Elections are going to be a huge target, as are power systems and emergency response systems. The manufacturers of these smart devices need to be held to higher security standards because the public cannot be trusted to take care of it themselves.

Sorry, I'm mainly an IT guy now, so get a little pissed at this stuff. :beer:
 
This is quickly getting into the area of 'political discussion' which will get this thread shut down in a heartbeat.

Then again, the important information has already been conveyed, so there's very little need for the conversation to continue anyway.
 
groveChuck said:
Noel, not sure if Vimeo problems are related.
Horse- exactly. I didn't know a lot about these things, but in doing several shoots for web security company Akamai, I learned about DDos attacks.
Now, instead of needing computers to conduct these attacks, they have the proliferation of smart devices just waiting to be taken over and used to launch millions of attacks.
The question remains, why? For the thrill of it? And what happens if they bombard election sites?
Click to expand...

Are you referring to candidate websites or actual election sites, as in voting machines? My understanding from the articles I've read is that no voting machines are connected to the internet period.
 
Alright, folks. Posts have been deleted, and this thread is done.

As has long been forum policy around here... no politics. Period.

There really is nowhere else this thread can go.
 
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