Leading IT decision-makers in the Kingdom have indicated that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are fast becoming a main security risk in for Saudi businesses. This was stated in a new survey released at a seminar in Riyadh on the cyber risks and business security in the Kingdom. The survey, commissioned by global Application Delivery Networking leader F5 Networks, and conducted by Redshift Research, said: “84 percent agreed that DDoS attacks can have a strong adverse impact on business.” The survey included 109 of these Saudi decision-makers, employed in companies with at least 500 employees said that 56 percent of respondents singled out data and revenue loss resulting of these attacks as the main concerns whereas 55 percent cited a related decline in productivity. Commenting on the survey, Saudi expert Mamdoh Allam, Saudi Arabia country manager of F5 Networks, said: “DDoS attacks are a major problem in Saudi Arabia and they are only going to intensify as cyber criminals compete with each other to devise new ways of causing disruption,” “DDoS attacks can affect businesses in many ways and attacks can cause damage running into many millions of dollars, permanently ruining a company’s reputation with everything from downtime to putting customer data at risk.” Allam explained that while attackers have traditionally used personal computer networks to launch DDoS attacks, it has become increasingly common to hijack oblivious global networks of malware infected machines to coordinate large-scale attacks. The survey also stated that 40 percent of the Saudi IT decision makers had endured a DDoS attack. 34 percent claimed normalcy after a few days, 36 percent after a week and 20 percent after a few weeks. Ten percent of those surveyed said it took up to a month to get back to business as usual. Around 45 percent did put the estimated cost of recovery at between $3 to 5 million, 30 percent between $5 to 10 million, and 16 percent between $10 to $20 million, and 2 percent said the damage was as high as $20 to $30 million. The survey also highlighted the need for greater industry-wide awareness. Allam stressed that the responsibility is now on businesses to place cyber security at the heart of their business strategies and do everything they can to gain a more comprehensive understanding of both cyber-attacker identity and their motivations. In particular, Allam pointed to the potential of full-proxy firewalls that can handle hundreds of thousand connections per second, policy management solutions that curb unauthorized access without impacting on the end-user, and uptime-boosting application security and traffic manager solutions that combine to block malicious intrusions and re-route legitimate requests. Source: http://www.arabnews.com/news/677396
Category Archives: DDoS Criminals
50% of companies unprepared for DDoS attacks
Research carried out by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International has revealed that only 50% of companies regard countermeasures against distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks as an important component of IT security. It means that the other 50% of companies may prove to be unprepared for a sudden attack, which could damage both their finances and their reputation as a result of the unavailability of internet services. Different industries have different views on how important it is to protect against DDoS attacks. For example, 60% of financial institutions, energy companies and utility services are conscious of the need of protection against DDoS attacks. This is the highest percentage of any industry. But it seems quite low considering that IT continuity is critical for these structures as they affect the well-being of many people. There is also a noticeable difference of opinion among different sized organizations: only 38% of small businesses consider protection against DDoS attacks an important component of IT security,but for big companies this figure reaches 60%. In recent years, DDoS attacks have become a common tool for cybercriminals and their clients. There are many different reasons for organizing these attacks — hooliganism, dishonest competition, blackmail. Currently the price to order a large-scale attack starts from just $50. Each year brings increasing numbers of DDoS attack schemes, so IT professionals at any company need to consider ways of protecting against them. According to the research, 23% of companies include maintaining the continuity of business processes in the top 3 most important tasks of their IT services. Interestingly the survey found no clear correlation between the level of threat faced in reality and the recognition of the need for DDoS protection. For instance, the sectors with public facing online services most affected by these incidents included IT companies (49%), e-commerce (44%), telecom (44%) and the media (42%). At the same time, countermeasures against DDoS were named as important by 53% of telecoms companies, 50% of IT businesses and only 41% of e-commerce and 38% of media companies. Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/50-of-companies-unprepared-for-DDoS-attacks-Report/articleshow/45575197.cms
View article:
50% of companies unprepared for DDoS attacks
US Officials Believe North Korea Was Involved In Sony Hacks
U.S. officials say they believe that North Korea’s government was involved in the large-scale hack of Sony servers, which led to the leak of troves of Sony data from emails to unreleased projects, according to the NYT. Federal cyber-security sources say that there is evidence indicating that the hack was routed through computers in Singapore, Thailand, Italy, Bolivia and Cyprus, ABC reports. While the hack resulted in a dump of Sony data, including email, confidential materials, and unreleased projects, it also specifically targeted The Interview , a movie featuring Seth Rogen and James Franco. The theory that North Korea was behind the attack was initially dismissed when North Korea publicly denied involvement, but official sources believe that the North Korean government was “centrally involved” in the attacks. The New York Times reports that officials aren’t going on the record, and are unsure whether or not the White House will publicly accuse Kim Jong Un and North Korea of the attack. The hackers’ methodology is highly reminiscent of tactics used by Anonymous — timed dumps of sensitive data, DDOS attacks, etc. — which have thus far clouded the investigation. The Interview , which depicts the assassination attempt of Kim Jong Un, was slotted to be released on Christmas Day until Sony was forced to pull the movie. Amid 9/11-referencing threats from the hacker organization, which called itself the Guardians of Peace, five of the major theater chains said they would not show the film, leading Sony to pull back entirely. Source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/17/us-officials-believe-north-korea-was-involved-in-sony-hacks/
Visit link:
US Officials Believe North Korea Was Involved In Sony Hacks
Finest Squad to bring DDoS services down
The Finest Squad is set out to bring cyber criminals to justice around the world; their main plan at the moment is to bring DDoS services down. When you visit the @FinestSquad Twitter account they are going all out with their tweets, you can clearly see they want the world to see they brought the Lizard Squad crew to their knees with its pinned tweet. Lizard Squad has been removed from twitter thanks to the Finest Squad, and then they say in their tweet, “Your welcome fellow gamers. We will make sure their IRC stays offline.” The next few steps for the Finest Squad include taking down / offline as many DDoS services, these include hosting, offshore, hosting, web booters and more. They have also announced on its Twitter account they are setting up a new YouTube channel, a news bulletin and a community forum – these are being developed right now so stay tuned. They also want to stack up its team; they basically want more of the finest. They do stress no illegal activities allowed, are you interested. This new role comes after they hired a professional full-time web designer/developer and web site security specialist. Looks like the Finest Squad is here to help all the gamers out there, PlayStation and Xbox gamers will be thrilled to bits Lizard Squad has had the Finest treatment. They do not like these kids harassing people and that is why they are there to bring justice. So far the Finest Squad website lists the LizardSquad member Obnoxious being arrested, @LizardPatrol, @LizardSquad and many more being removed from Twitter. All these wrong doings are being hunted, such as the EZTV proxy site being shutdown – read more here. Are you happy with what the Finest Squad have done so far? Source: http://www.onlinesocialmedia.net/20141217/finest-squad-to-bring-ddos-services-down/
Read this article:
Finest Squad to bring DDoS services down
DDoS Attacks Hit Equity Poker Network Full Flush Poker
A rash of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that have been plaguing the online poker industry as of late have also included the Equity Poker Network (EPN). Following the cancellation of the “Winning Millions” tournament at the Winning Poker Network (WPN) on Sunday due to DDoS attacks, as well as similar actions by hackers that caused both WPN and the Merge Gaming Network to be shutdown on Tuesday, EPN and flagship skin Full Flush Poker issued press releases confirming that the network has also been under fire from computer miscreants. The DDOS attacks at EPN have occurred intermittently across the past six weeks, causing some short-term disruptions to Network connectivity, and frustrating poker room outages,” stated the EPN press release. Players at EPN have been subjected to disconnections that typically last no longer than 60 seconds. While that amount of time is relatively short, it certainly is long enough to seriously affect tournament play, as well as action on the cash tables. Network in Motion to Fight Hackers Full Flush informed that the DDoS incidents were small in number and that customer support was able to satisfy player concerns over the issues “quickly and efficiently.” EPN pointed out that account information of players “remains uncompromised,” and that efforts have been made to combat the actions by the hackers. We are working behind the scenes to strengthen the Network mechanisms and structures necessary to deal with such assaults on our operations, and we hope to reach a solution shortly that will fix the outages our Network’s Operators and their players have had to endure during recent times,” an EPN spokesperson said. The DDoS attacks have been quite troubling and come at a time when many sites throughout the online poker industry have undertaken steps to attract more recreational players to the tables. The negative press that comes from such attacks may cause some of those players to turn their backs on Internet poker, as trust and security are of utmost importance. We apologize to you, our players, for these recent disconnections caused by nefarious outside sources,” said an FFP representative. “We understand how frustrating this has been for our players, but we ask that if you experience a disconnect to be patient, wait 30-60 seconds for our mitigation devices to kick in, and the service will be restored as normal.” Source: http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/networks-and-rooms/12171-ddos-attacks-hit-equity-poker-network/
More:
DDoS Attacks Hit Equity Poker Network Full Flush Poker
Sony Pictures hit by ‘fightback on filesharers’ DDoS claims – report
War on Guardians of Peace? Sony Pictures is alleged to have conducted a retaliatory DDoS attack against websites currently holding its leaked information for public download, according to a media report.…
View the original here:
Sony Pictures hit by ‘fightback on filesharers’ DDoS claims – report
Sony Pictures not using Amazon Web Services to DDoS illegal file-sharing websites
Reports this week claimed Sony Pictures were carrying out denial of service attacks against certain websites which were sharing files stolen in the devastating cyber-attack against the studio. The sources speaking to Recode said that Sony Pictures was using Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud computing infrastructure in Tokyo and Singapore to flood websites which are sharing the files illegally, but this claim has now been denied by the company involved. A spokesperson for AWS has however categorically denied that this is the situation, telling IBTimes UK : AWS employs a number of automated detection and mitigation techniques to prevent the misuse of our services. In cases where the misuse is not detected and stopped by the automated measures, we take manual action as soon as we become aware of any misuse. Our terms are clear about this. The activity being reported is not currently happening on AWS. It is unclear if Sony Pictures is carrying out the attacks suggested by the sources speaking to Recode, and simply using another computing infrastructure, or if the studio is not actually carrying out these attacks at all. Martin McKeay, who works with cloud services provider Akamai, told ITSecurity Guru that there could be some truth in the speculation: “It has the potential for being true and not utterly impossible to be some truth to this, and I don’t think it is utterly impossible that they are doing it through some third party who is doing this via AWS,” he said. “There are some systems out there for doing load testing and some of them can be done through AWS and can generate traffic like that, but what is more likely is that they are feeding the torrent sites with false information and causing a DDoS in that way.” Tim Erlin from Tripwire told IBTimes UK that if there is truth to the rumour, it could spell even more trouble for Sony Pictures: “Taking the step to ‘hack back’ against perceived legitimate targets, based on their own assessment of guilt, presents a myriad of potential legal problems. If Sony manages to disrupt, intentionally or accidentally, a legitimate service in the process, they may be adding to their problems, rather than improving the situation.” Sony Pictures has not commented on these reports, but the company is still trying to get its systems back fully under its control since the studio was attacked by a group of mysterious hackers called Guardians of Peace almost three weeks ago. “ The movie of terrorism” The group, which claims to have stolen “tens of terabytes” of information from Sony Pictures, released the latest tranche of stolen documents on Wednesday. Along with releasing copies of Sony Pictures’ films, the leak includes personal and financial information of thousands of the company’s employees, internal emails from executive discussing high profile stars like Angelina Jolie and films like Jobs, the Steve Jobs biopic. The leaked data has also included highly sensitive information on actors’ salaries and the amount of money that it is being paid by Netflix for its films. Source: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sony-pictures-not-using-amazon-web-services-ddos-illegal-file-sharing-websites-1479230
Read More:
Sony Pictures not using Amazon Web Services to DDoS illegal file-sharing websites
PTS calls for concerted action after TeliaSonera DDoS attack
Swedish postal and telecoms regulator PTS said it will call telecommunications operators to a meeting in January following two distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks recently. TeliaSonera’s mobile and fixed internet traffic was affected on 09-10 December, but PT did not say when the other had taken place. The regulator said the latest offensives had even affected the operators’ infrastructure and critical systems, which is unusual. As such problems can hit any operator, PTS sees the need for a dialogue in the sector to identify what action can be taken to prevent any such problems in the future, and how operators and authorities can cooperate to mitigate the fall-out of an attack. UPDATED: The high-profile hacking attack on Swedish internet giant Telia has been linked to a police raid on Pirate Bay, which experts say “provoked feelings” among hackers. UPDATED: The high-profile hacking attack on Swedish internet giant Telia has been linked to a police raid on Pirate Bay, which experts say “provoked feelings” among hackers. The attack has severely affected users of Telia’s online services with many struggling to get a steady connection on Friday. “It started just after 1 o’clock and seems to be the same kind of attack as before,” Henrik Johansson of Telia told the TT news agency. David Jacoby, chief researcher at data security firm Kaspersky Lab said the attack likely stems from a police raid earlier this week against the file-sharing Pirate Bay in Stockholm. Swedish cops briefly ground the site with its Swedish domain name before it come online again a few hours later with a different domain name. According to Jacoby the group that claims to be behind the Telia attack, Lizard Squad, is one of many underground groups involved in the anonymous Pirate Bay movement. “These attacks don’t come from nowhere. The Pirate Bay raid has provoked feelings in these groups,” Jacoby told the TT news agency. He added; “There will most likely be more similar attacks against film companies, games companies and public authorities,” he said. Twitter has already closed two accounts linked to the Lizard Squad in the wake of the attack. A previous attack over Tuesday and Wednesday also caused headaches for the company. A Telia spokesman told The Local at the time that the company had put “technical arrangements in place to ensure [an attack] won’t happen again”. Lateon Thursday, a well known hacking collective called Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attacks. It is understood that Lizard Squad was targeting gaming company Electronic Arts, which uses Telia for net connection. The group has a long history of carrying out DDOS attacks, which entails a website being bombarded with communication requests so that the servers become overloaded and the site crashes. The group has targeted XBox Live and the Playstation Network in the past, and even tweeted out a bomb threat to a plane carrying a Sony executive. Over five million Swedes use Telia to provide their home phones, TV and mobile services. The company is part-owned by the Swedish state. Sources: http://www.telecompaper.com/news/pts-calls-for-concerted-action-after-teliasonera-ddos-attack–1054899 http://www.thelocal.se/20141212/telia-hit-again-in-new-hacking-attack
See original article:
PTS calls for concerted action after TeliaSonera DDoS attack
AbleGamers’ weird weekend of porn stars, charity and a worries over a DDoS attack [correction]
AbleGamers believe they became the target of a DDoS attack over the weekend after the charity founders declined to accept funds from porn star Mercedes Carrera because of her connection to the GamerGate movement, according to the gaming and disability charity. But Carrera tells Polygon she had nothing to do with the issues the site ran into over the weekend and that while she is a GamerGate supporter the live stream adult cam show is not connected to GamerGate. “In fact, I was unaware any of this was happening until checking my social media on Sunday,” she said. The disagreement started out as an offer by Carrera to help raise funds for AbleGamers, a website dedicated to gaming and disability. “I chose AbleGamers as I have become friendly with some disabled gamers and wanted to support the mission of providing alternatives in gaming for those who are not fully abled,” Carrera told Polygon. “I see the value in disabled gamers having an opportunity to experience a variety of actions they may not have access to in day to day life.” AbleGamers officials said they were initially open to the idea. “As a sex positive organization, our immediate response was ‘Absolutely,’” according to a post on AbleGamers. “We would be honored to be chosen.” But a thread about the fundraiser on Reddit raised concerns for AbleGamers. “In doing our due diligence we discovered the event organizer was putting together a GamerGate stream that would ‘for now’ be ‘a charity stream’ because they ‘cannot mention that it is a GG stream as it might shy away BZ (Brazzers) and others,’” reads a statement from the organization. According to a message on its official website, AbleGamers “became concerned by the lack of transparency in the original emails having made no mention of GamerGate. We became further alarmed as the post continued adding ‘GamerGate [h]as just weaponized porn.’” Carrera said that AbleGamers emailed the coordinators of the event and said they didn’t want to receive money from the fundraising because of what they read on the Reddit thread, including someone writing that “GamerGate had weaponized porn”. After announcing it would no longer be involved in the charity event, the AbleGamers website began having technical issues, according to site officials. AbleGamers representative Steven Spohn told Polygon that a DDoS attack was confirmed by the website’s host. “When we released our statement, we figured it was traffic,” says Spohn. “Our server is ‘charity level’ which means cheap and no DDoS protection. “When we started getting ‘cannot connect to service’ on the webpage, we called Liquid Web. Three different phone representatives said that it was in fact a DDoS. We relayed the information to our audience as it was happening. Our website is on a cloud server, sandboxed away from others. “So, were we?” Spohn continues. “Our host says so. Could they be wrong? Sure. If LW tells us three techs and their top admin were wrong, then we’ll agree we weren’t [victims of a DDoS attack]. Until then I’m sticking to we were DDoS attacked around 1pm Eastern on Sunday for about 30 minutes.” Carrera is adamant she had nothing to do with the issues, something she goes into in more detail in an open letter on Destructoid. She also said that the fundraiser has never been connected with GamerGate. “The live stream cam show adult content event happening January 2 is not connected to GamerGate,” she said. “However, as I have come out in support of GamerGate’s mission of ethics in journalism and resistance to censorship, it is not surprising that the two became conflated on Reddit. However the show itself is not intended to be a GamerGate sanctioned event. ” She added that the fundraiser is still happening and that a partnership is in the works for who will be the recipient of the money raised. Source: http://www.polygon.com/2014/12/9/7358899/ablegamers-gamergate-mercedes-carrera-ddos
Follow this link:
AbleGamers’ weird weekend of porn stars, charity and a worries over a DDoS attack [correction]
1&1 goes titsup, blames lengthy outage on DDoS attack
UK hosting company 1&1 went titsup late on Tuesday night and struggled to recover this morning, after claiming it had been the victim of a Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack. The website collapsed shortly before 10pm yesterday, and it has taken 1&1 a full 12 hours to get its service back up and running. Readers who told the Reg about the outage said that the service had been flaky for several hours before it keeled over. 1&1 blamed the downtime on a DDoS attack in a tweet. However, although the website appeared to be returning to normal, 1&1 had yet to update its customers about the status of its system at time of writing. Customers were still griping about the mysterious outage this morning. Indeed, 1&1 was tight-lipped about the cause of the service disruption on its status page, which made no mention of a system security breach. Last month, Fasthosts blamed a five-hour outage it had suffered on a DDoS attack. Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/10/1_and_1_hosting_firm_claims_ddos_attack_downs_website/
Read More:
1&1 goes titsup, blames lengthy outage on DDoS attack