Author Archives: Enurrendy

DDoS attacks threatens New Zealand organisations

The New Zealand Internet Task Force (NZITF) advises that an unknown international group has this week begun threatening New Zealand organisations with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. DDoS attacks are attempts to make an organisation’s Internet links or network unavailable to its users for an extended length of time. This latest DDoS threat appears as an email threatening to take down an organisation’s Internet links unless substantial payments in the digital currency Bitcoin are made. New Zealand Internet Task Force (NZITF) Chair Barry Brailey warns the threat is not an idle one and should be taken extremely seriously as the networks of some New Zealand organisations have already been targetted. “The networks of at least four New Zealand organisations that NZITF knows of have been affected, so far. A number of Australian organisations have also been affected,” he says. “This unknown group of criminals have been sending emails to a number of addresses within an organisation. Sometimes these are support or helpdesk addresses, other times they are directed at individuals. The emails contain statements threatening DDoS, such as: “Your site is going under attack unless you pay 25 Bitcoin.”, “We are aware that you probably don’t have 25 BTC at the moment, so we are giving you 24 hours.” or “IMPORTANT: You don’t even have to reply. Just pay 25 BTC to [bitcoin address] – we will know it’s you and you will never hear from us again.” The emails may also provide links to news articles about other attacks the group has conducted. NZITF urges New Zealand firms and organisations to be on the alert. They also suggest that targeted entities don’t pay as even if this stops a current attack, it makes your organisation a likely target for future exploitation as you have a history of making payments. It is also advisable staff be educated and be on the lookout for any emails matching the descriptions above. Have them alert appropriate security personnel within the organisation as soon as possible. Source: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=18336

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DDoS attacks threatens New Zealand organisations

MTN suffers a DDoS attack

Connectivity at MTN’s Gallo Manor data centre has been fully restored after the Johannesburg site was hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack earlier this afternoon. MTN alerted clients just after 3pm today that it had suffered a DDoS attack, which resulted in packet loss and a disturbance to clients’ cloud services.  At the time the company said MTN Business’ network operations centre was working on resolving the problem to avoid any further attacks. This comes less than two days after a power outage at the same data centre caused loss of connectivity. MTN chief technology officer Eben Albertyn says, while the DDoS attack today hampered the company’s ability to provide connectivity services, engineers worked “fervently” to fully restore services and avert further attacks, and connectivity was restored soon after. “The interruption lasted only a few minutes and is completely unrelated to the outage experienced on Monday. MTN wishes to apologise profusely to its customers for any inconvenience caused.” On Sunday evening just after 6pm, MTN’s Gallo Manor data centre went offline, causing major disruptions to clients’ services, including Afrihost. MTN put the outage down to a power outage. The problem persisted until the next day, with services being restored around 11am on Monday. Digital Attack Map defines DDoS attack as: “An attempt to make an online service unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.”  The live data site notes these attacks can target a wide variety of important resources, from banks to news Web sites, and present a major challenge to making sure people can publish and access important information. Source: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=142968:MTN-weathers-DDOS-attack

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MTN suffers a DDoS attack

Staffordshire school hit by suspected DDoS attack

A secondary school near Burton-on-Trent in East Staffordshire had admitted that its website was knocked offline at various points by hackers in recent weeks. The attack appears to be denial-of-service (DoS), with hactivism group Anonymous reportedly taking responsibility. Burton Mail reports that John Taylor High School’s website suffered from “significant periods of downtime during the past few weeks”, adding that a member of Anonymous had contacted the newspaper directly to claim responsibility. “It has come to our immediate attention that the security used for school systems is not up to scratch,” the member said when interviewed. “This is putting pupils at risk of being targeted by paedophiles who have acquired the skill to access data which could lead them to being able to collect information and stalk pupils.” The member continued: “We give every school in this country one month to fix their pitiful security systems. If, after that time, we can still achieve penetration at a reasonable level of attack we will personally disable their systems. “We do not expect them to be able to stop us at an advanced level, however the level of hack used on the John Taylor systems highlighted a very serious problem.” Mike Donoghue, head teacher at John Taylor, which has around 1,500 students, confirmed that they were still investigating the incident, and added that the systems are now fully functional. Speaking to SCMagazineUK.com earlier today, Donoghue drilled down into some of the details, confirming that the outage related specifically to The Vault, a virtual learning environment – developed by FROG but hosted on the school’s servers – which is used to host teaching materials, former test papers and other revision guidance. The school, a specialist ‘science and leadership academy;, was first alerted to the downtime by students, on Twitter, who were trying to access the system, with IT technicians subsequently blocking all IP address so no-one could access the service. The second outage lasted a “couple of days” over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend. Donoghue was keen to stress that there was “no breach” of sensitive student data, and said that the school continues to work with providers RM and FROG to monitor the issue, and harden their existing security controls. Students were informed of the issue during assembly, and parents have also been made aware. The principal said that the effect of the incident was “largely mitigated” because the downtime wasn’t overly long, and most of the materials could still be accessed by “just a few more clicks on Google”. He also doubted the possibility of Anonymous being behind the attack, saying that the outages stopped after students were alerted to the situation. Source: http://www.scmagazineuk.com/staffordshire-school-hit-by-suspected-denial-of-service-attack/article/412236/

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Staffordshire school hit by suspected DDoS attack

Mounties nab Canadian woman, 27, in webcam hack shenanigans bust

Nefarious pervert hacks parlour cameras for heavy petting pwnage The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has nabbed a Canadian woman believed to have originated a botnet which she used to recreationally terrorise victims.…

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Mounties nab Canadian woman, 27, in webcam hack shenanigans bust

Community college targeted ongoing DDoS attack

Walla Walla Community College is under cyberattack this week by what are believed to be foreign computers that have jammed the college’s Internet systems. Bill Storms, technology director, described it as akin to having too many cars on a freeway, causing delays and disruption to those wanting to connect to the college’s website. The type of attack is a distributed denial of service, or DDoS. They’re often the result of hundreds or even thousands of computers outside the U.S. that are programed with viruses that continually connect to and overload targeted servers. Storms said bandwidth monitors noticed the first spike of attacks on Sunday. To stop the attacks, college officials have had to periodically shut down the Web connection while providing alternative working Internet links to students and staff. The fix, so far, has only been temporary as the problem often returns the next day. “We think we have it under control in the afternoon. And we have a quiet period,” Storm said. “And then around 9 a.m. it all comes in again.” Walla Walla Community College may not be the only victim of the DDoS attack. Storm said he was informed that as many as 39 other state agencies have been the target of similar DDoS attacks. As for the reason for the attack, none was given to college officials. Storms noted campus operators did receive a number of unusual phone calls where the callers said that they were in control of the Internet. But no demands were made. “Some bizarre phone calls came in, and I don’t know whether to take them serious or not,” Storms said. State officials have been contacted and are aiding the college with the problem. Storms said they have idea how long the DDoS attack will last. Source: http://union-bulletin.com/news/2015/apr/30/community-college-targeted-ongoing-cyberattack/

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Community college targeted ongoing DDoS attack

FBI investigating Rutgers University in DDoS attack

The FBI is working with Rutgers University to identify the source of a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that have plagued the school this week. The assault began Monday morning and took down internet service across the campus according to NJ.com. Some professors had to cancel classes and students were unable to enroll, submit assignments or take finals since Wi-fi service and email have been affected as has an online resource called Sakai. This is the second DDoS attack on the university this month and the third since November. Authorities and the Rutgers Office of Information and Technology (OIT) haven’t released any details thus far about the possible source of the attacks. Currently, only certain parts of the university have internet service. The school will make frequent updates on to the Rutgers website about its progress in restoring service. Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/the-fbi-is-helpign-rutger-inveigate-a-series-of-ddos-attack/article/412149/

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FBI investigating Rutgers University in DDoS attack

One fifth of DDoS attacks last over a day

Some 20 per cent of DDoS attacks have lasting damage that can see them taking a site down for 24 hours or more, according to research by Kaspersky. In fact, almost a tenth of the companies surveyed said their systems were down for several weeks or longer, while less than a third said they had disruption lasting less than an hour. The investigation revealed that the majority of attacks (65 per cent) caused severe delays or complete disruption, while only a third caused no disruption at all. Evgeny Vigovsky, head of Kaspersky DDoS Protection, said: “For companies, losing a service completely for a short time, or suffering constant delays in accessing it over several days, can be equally serious problems. “Both situations can impact customer satisfaction and their willingness to use the same service in the future. Using reliable security solutions to protect against DDoS attacks enables companies to give their customers uninterrupted access to online services, regardless of whether they are facing a powerful short-term assault or a weaker but persistent long-running campaign.” The company highlighted an attack on Github at the end of March when Chinese hackers brought the site down. That attack lasted 118 hours and demonstrated that even large communities are at risk. Last month, another study by Kaspersky revealed that only 37 per cent of companies were prepared for a DDoS attack, despite 26 per cent of them being concerned the problems caused by such attacks were long-term, meaning they could lose current or prospective clients as a result. Source: http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/24514/one-fifth-of-ddos-attacks-last-over-a-day

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One fifth of DDoS attacks last over a day

High volume DDoS attacks still persistent

Arbor Networks released global DDoS attack data that shows a continuation of extremely high volume attacks. In Q1 2015, there were 25 attacks larger than 100Gbps globally. In the past year, Arbor h…

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High volume DDoS attacks still persistent

DDoSsers use reflection amplification to crank up the volume to 100Gbps+

Ne’er-do-wells: ‘Hey.’ Dumb servers: ‘WHAT?’ Targets: ‘AAARGH’ DDoS attacks have grown in volume yet again with 25 attacks larger than 100Gbps globally in Q1 2015, according to the latest stats from DDoS mitigation firm Arbor Networks.…

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DDoSsers use reflection amplification to crank up the volume to 100Gbps+