Category Archives: DDoS Vendors

AFP and RBA websites hit by DDoS attacks

The websites for the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Reserve Bank of Australia were hit overnight by distributed denial of service attacks claimed to be brought about by Indonesians angry over the leaks that reveal Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) had been tapping the phones of high ranking Indonesian government officials, including President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The AFP’s website was for some time overnight but was restored this morning, with one Twitter user claiming responsibility for bringing the sites down using the hashtags #AnonymousIndonesia and #IndonesiaCyberArmy. The AFP said it was taking the attack “very seriously” but said that no sensitive information was hosted on the public-facing website. “The AFP website is not connected to AFP IT systems. The AFP website is not hosted by AFP ICT infrastructure. It is hosted by a third party hosting provider,” the AFP spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson said he was not at liberty to divulge the name of the hosting company. The AFP said the attacks were irresponsible and would not influence government policy. “Activities such as hacking, creating or propagating malicious viruses or participating in DDOS attacks are not harmless fun. They can result in serious long-term consequences for individuals, such as criminal convictions or jail time,” he said. “AFP Cyber Crime Operations identifies, investigates and prosecutes individuals or groups for offences committed against Australian critical infrastructure and information systems.” The RBA’s website was affected by the DDoS attacks, but a spokesperson for the RBA denied that the website had been brought down. “There has been no outage but the Bank’s website has been experiencing access delays for some users,” the spokesperson said. “The bank has DOS protection for its website, which has been effectively deployed. The bank’s website and systems remain secure.” The attacks come as Australia’s relationship with Indonesia continues to strain in the wake of the phone tapping revelations leaked earlier this week by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Prime Minister Tony Abbott is facing increasing pressure from the Indonesian government to explain the revelations. Source: http://www.zdnet.com/au/afp-and-rba-websites-hit-by-ddos-attacks-7000023451/

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AFP and RBA websites hit by DDoS attacks

Bitstamp Suffers Banking Software Issue and DDoS Attack

Bitstamp’s website has been experiencing a number of difficulties over the past couple of days. Yesterday, the Slovenia-based company experienced problems with the banking software it uses. A statement on the company’s blog and Facebook page reads: Dear Bitstamp clients, We are currently experiencing some problems with our banking software. As a result, deposits and withdrawals may be delayed. We expect this issue to be solved be resolved tomorrow or the next day. We kindly ask our customers with pending transfers to remain patient and refrain from submitting additional support tickets on the matter. We will announce as soon as this issue gets resolved. Thank you for your understanding. Best regards, The Bitstamp team With a tweet 19 hours ago stating: Bitstamp CEO Nejc Kodri? said the issue related to the company’s transaction log: “We were missing bank transaction log from Friday. Also sending transfers out was disrupted, but it now works.” This afternoon, the site suffered a DDoS attack. The last time CoinDesk was successfully able to access price data from Bitstamp was 14:05 (GMT). The site is still experiencing problems. Kodri? said his team is “still working on this” issue. Kodri? said the site hasn’t experienced any difficulties because of increased user traffic over the past couple of days, during which the bitcoin price has increased sharply. In fact, the entrepreneur said the site experienced a record number of visits yesterday with no problems. Source: http://www.coindesk.com/bitstamp-suffers-banking-software-issue-ddos-attack/

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Bitstamp Suffers Banking Software Issue and DDoS Attack

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Targeted for DDoS attack

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has been targeted in an Internet attack known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS). The attack has disrupted RFE/RL’s global multimedia news and information services intermittently since November 14. Nonetheless, its computer network was working on November 18 and broadcasts have continued normally. The attack has not prevented the public from accessing RFE/RL’s web pages. But it has slowed the ability of RFE/RL’s broadcasting services to upload fresh news stories, photographs, and video to the Internet. RFE/RL President Kevin Klose said information is still being gathered about the attack, but he confirmed that it is believed to be “targeted.” Klose said a decision was taken on November 18 to report on the attack in response to the needs of the broadcasters’ audiences, “who rely on RFE/RL reporting, and who themselves contend with countless obstacles to connect with us every day.” RFE/RL’s content-management system also supports Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting. Those U.S. international media networks also have been adversely affected by the attacks but continue to operate. Klose described the attack as “stark evidence of the challenges that confront the free dissemination and exchange of information in this age.” A DDoS attack floods the target with fake requests that come from thousands or even millions of computers that have been compromised or infected with viruses or malware. RFE/RL experienced a more limited DDoS attack against its Belarusian language service in 2008. RFE/RL Director of Technology Luke Springer said the latest attack was discovered on November 14 when hardware for the international media organization’s computer network began receiving many times more requests than normal. At the peak of the attack, the RFE/RL network was receiving requests for data from hundreds of thousands of computers every second. Springer said that means there are probably more than 1 million malware-infected computers being directed by the attackers — most likely without the knowledge of the computer owners. Technical investigations show that nearly 80 percent of the computers sending out requests for data as part of the DDoS attack are in China and nearly 20 percent are in Russia. But Springer said those findings do not indicate who is responsible for the attack. Attempts to make technical changes that counter the attack have temporarily alleviated the problem. But Springer said the attackers also have been changing their methods, allowing them to continue disrupting services intermittently. Springer said the DDoS attack has not damaged RFE/RL’s network equipment. But he says that “filling up the Internet pipeline with so many bogus requests has caused a traffic jam.” RFE/RL is a private, nonprofit organization funded by a grant from the U.S. Congress.

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Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Targeted for DDoS attack

Tracking botnets using automatically generated domains

Stefano Zanero is an Assistant Professor at Politechnico di Milano, where he focuses on systems security. Modern botnets rely on domain-generation algorithms (DGAs) to build resilient command-and-c…

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Tracking botnets using automatically generated domains

Pro Afrikaans Action Group (Praag) under DDoS attack

Afrikaans language activist group Praag intends to lay criminal charges against people responsible for attacking its website, the group said on Thursday. Pro Afrikaans Action Group (Praag) founder Dan Roodt said the website and servers had been under a “distributed denial of service” (DDOS) attack, causing disruptions since Tuesday. He believed the attack was aimed at bankrupting Praag and its service provider through the consumption of bandwidth and damage to network infrastructure. “We are going to lay charges with the SA Police Service under the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act 25 of 2002 for the DDOS attack against us, but also against those anonymous individuals slandering us on Facebook, social media, and in relation to potential advertisers on our site,” said Roodt. On Sunday, Rapport reported that Google had decided to stop channelling advertising to Praag, and this threatened the future of the website. Roodt told the paper that Praag made thousands of rands from advertising on its website, and would not be able to function without advertisers. He said Google told him that Afrikaans was not a recognised advertising language and it could channel advertisements only to the English version of the Praag website. Roodt, however, alleged that a woman who opposed Praag was behind the problem. He claimed the woman had started a “malicious and fanatical” Facebook group called “Speak Out Against the Website Praag”. In a letter she reportedly posted on the social media network, she accused Praag of being racist and of spreading hate speech, and shared the letter with companies she claimed were helping it spread this message by advertising on the website. On Thursday, Roodt said he had the backing of supporters to take on the attackers. “We will not be using the distasteful and underhanded techniques of our opponents but will be defending ourselves in an open, transparent and legal manner,” he said. Source: http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/charges-pending-after-praag-web-attack-1.1607313#.UoTwduLrKb4

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Pro Afrikaans Action Group (Praag) under DDoS attack

Yet ANOTHER IE 0-day hole found: Malware-flingers already using it for drive-by badness

You read that right: OPT OUT of a botnet by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del Security researchers have discovered new zero-day vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer that are already being harnessed by hackers to run a new type of drive-by attack.…

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Yet ANOTHER IE 0-day hole found: Malware-flingers already using it for drive-by badness

Avoiding Website Outages During the Holiday Season

The holiday shopping season is practically upon us, and online retailers don’t want to endure any IT downtime between Thanksgiving and Christmas when many ring up a third of their annual receipts. That’s a lot of green. Online shopping carts should register nearly $100 billion this holiday season in online sales – up 12% from a year ago, estimates Shop.org. What can online retailers do to avoid outages and other disruptions? It’s an important issue because an estimated one-in-five retailers suffered outages last year. The damage? Forty-five% estimated they could lose $500,000 to $5 million in one day due to a website crash. Gartner consultants predict a 10% growth in the financial impact that cybercrime will have on online businesses through 2016. They see distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attackers taking advantage of new software vulnerabilities to begin an assault with multiple sources and often multiple targets. These can be introduced via employee-owned devices used in the workplace and even via the Cloud. Actions to Take Now While it’s probably too late to take major actions this holiday season, retailers can still take some steps to minimize such disruptions. However, to really combat the outage and downtime challenges, retailers should begin taking more effective steps after the New Year starts to get ready for the 2014 holiday rush. Three-of-four online retailers (77%) strengthened their online IT defenses this year to reduce downtime from last year. Downtime certainly occurs. Considering the common 99.5% system uptime, this leaves 43 hours – roughly one-and-a-half days – of downtime yearly. A key focus area should be ensuring your site can handle rapid and unexpected increases in demand. That demand can take two forms: desired demand, which should be scaled up Cyber Monday and undesired demand, which should be mitigated, like a cyberattack. Here’s what online retailers still can do before the approaching Big Season. Determine whether you can handle the increased traffic from desired demand expected during the holiday season, especially on Cyber Monday, when online sales soar. You might still be able to turn to cloud-based services to add capacity and prevent a site crash. But if you don’t have a cloud provider, it’s probably too late to make those arrangements and transfer your data to the provider’s site. Determine if you have adequate mitigation capabilities for DDoS attacks from hackers. The last quarter of the year, primarily holiday season, is when DDoS attacks increase in size and intensity. In the 2012 fourth quarter, one DDoS protection service mitigated attacks that reached more than 50 gigabits per second directed against ecommerce clients; the average attack duration was 32.2 hours. Find out how various types of DDoS threats can impact different elements of your network and determine mitigation actions that can protect them, including employing a DDoS mitigation service. Keep tabs on blogs and social media sites because hackers enjoy bragging about their activities and sometimes disclose their next industry target. Make sure your payment data being collected remains secure because attackers often are going after customer credit card data. For retailers about to begin or who have begun what’s called the “network freeze,” in which no changes of any type can be made to their network and system components or apps operations until mid-January to avoid triggering downtime, if any severe vulnerability that has the potential to cause downtime is found, an emergency change window should be requested to remediate the problem – even during the “freeze.” This “freeze” practice actually is a Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulation. But only 21%bof businesses that store credit and debit card data comply with that regulation in between their mandatory annual audits, a Verizon study finds. What to Do for Next Holiday Season When the holiday and post-holiday sales rush slows, begin thinking about the 2014 holiday season, especially if you’re really bent on enhancing your defenses and scalability against downtime or outages and you haven’t taken major steps yet. Here are some suggested initiatives: Confer with a consulting firm or a data center or cloud provider about what you need to do, specifically, to realize your objectives. Consider actually retaining a service provider that delivers services to help you scale out and protect your IT operations. Going to the cloud doesn’t alleviate your IT responsibility where security is involved. The cloud doesn’t necessarily make your apps secure. A service provider can work with developers to develop and meet these objectives. Shift to a scale-out IT model so your applications scale out, not up, and this may require application transformation efforts to make you application resilient even when infrastructure services are disrupted in local regions. Act early in the year because this type of transformation effort will require changes across all parts of your infrastructure and application; no real shortcut exists and there won’t be time to make these types of changes once the selling season is upon you. Embrace cloud-type platforms if you’re a seasonal online retailer because they’re more dynamic and it’s easy to scale up quickly to meet demand and not incur extra costs when the demand isn’t there. Look into establishing a hybrid cloud so those apps that can’t be moved to the cloud quite yet, can continue to be handled in their traditional manner. For instance, you might use the cloud for web and application tiers and keep other operations in your normal IT setup until you are ready to take on the transformation actives required to update your database environment. Be sure to test your enhanced system before the holiday season and design it to support 100% availability because your goal must strive to always be up. This means securing secondary and tertiary facilities and resources far apart from your principal facility so if an outage occurs in one site, the load can be automatically shifted to an alternate site. Lastly, understand your key performance indicators, or KPIs – those measurements used to evaluate the success of particular activities in which you’re engaged. To do this well, you must possess a firm understanding of the KPIs across all tiers of your applications. Certainly for online retailers, the holiday selling season is critical to their financial strength and even survival. That’s why it’s imperative to keep your IT operations up and running and to recognize and repel cyber-attackers. But remember. You can’t do everything. Simply do what you can for this year and move swiftly to prepare for the 2014 holiday season. Source: http://multichannelmerchant.com/crosschannel/avoiding-outages-holiday-season-06112013/

Anonymous Philippines hack and DDoS Government sites

Critics of the Aquino administration responsible for hacking government websites will be dealt with accordingly, Malacañang warned yesterday. “There are existing laws against hacking and proper action will be taken,” Press Secretary Herminio Coloma told a news briefing when sought for comment on the latest attacks on the websites of several government agencies by activist hacker group Anonymous Philippines. “There are sufficient avenues for free expression so there is no need to resort to illegal acts such as hacking of government websites,” Coloma said. He said that sentiments against the government could be aired in street protests. According to Coloma, there is enough “democratic space” where the public can air their grievances. More gov’t sites under attack Anonymous Philippines claimed it has stopped the operation of major government websites as hackers geared up for today’s “Million Mask March” in Quezon City. In a post on its Facebook page yesterday, the group said the websites of around 100 local and national government agencies – including that of the Official Gazette, Senate, House of Representatives and the National Bureau of Investigation – were “currently down.” With the exception of the Senate website (senate.gov.ph), a random check showed that most of the national government websites in the list were accessible as of yesterday afternoon. Despite having a security feature to mitigate attacks, the Official Gazette website (gov.ph) was temporarily inaccessible yesterday. In a phone interview with The STAR, Roy Espiritu of the Information and Communications Technology Office confirmed that a number of government sites have been under distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks since Monday. However, he said that “critical” government websites are “secure.” Espiritu said government websites are currently in the process of migrating into more secure servers as mandated by Administrative Order 39, signed by the President in July, which establishes a Government Web Hosting Service. The service seeks to “ensure the government’s Internet presence around the clock under all foreseeable conditions.” Earlier, Espiritu said they are looking into the possibility of incorporating security measures to beef up the defenses of government websites. A DDoS attack is mounted to shut down an Internet site by flooding it with access requests and overload its server handling capabilities. Websites affected by successful DDoS attacks are inaccessible to legitimate users who wish to view their content. The Official Gazette website is protected from DDoS attacks by CloudFare, which offers security by checking the integrity of browsers and looking for threat signatures from users who wish to access the site. DDoS attacks are dependent on the number of people trying to access the website at the same time. Espiritu earlier said that even the most secure websites could be affected by such attacks. In 2010, the websites of Visa and MasterCard were affected by a DDoS attack mounted by supporters of whistle-blower organization WikiLeaks. DDoS attacks are different from hacking, which requires an Internet user to access the website using the password of a legitimate administrator. Investigation According to Espiritu, an investigation will be conducted to determine the people behind the attacks on government websites. He said the people behind the attacks may be charged under the e-Commerce law as the move to shut down the websites deprived the public of the information that they need from the government. On Monday, the website of the Office of the Ombudsman was defaced by people claiming to be members of Anonymous Philippines. The latest cyber attacks on government websites came amid issues involving alleged misuse of the Priority Development Assistance Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program of the legislative and the executive, respectively. In August, various government sites were hacked during the Million People March attended by thousands in Luneta. Previous incidents of attacks happened during the height of discussions on various issues such as the passage of the Cybercrime Prevention Law and the territorial dispute with China. Worldwide protest The Million Mask March is an event that will be held in various locations around the globe today “to remind this world what it has forgotten. That fairness, justice, and freedom are more than just words.” According to its official Facebook page, the march will cover various topics including government, education reform, constitutional rights, freedom, unity, drug abuse, respect for all, corruption, nutrition and health and violence among children, among others. Based on the events page of the Million Mask March-Philippines, over 1,000 Facebook users have confirmed attendance in today’s march. A post by an Anonymous member said participants will meet at the Quezon Memorial Circle at 8 a.m. to discuss the activities for the day. The march will start in front of the Sandiganbayan along Commonwealth Avenue to Batasang Pambansa. In a text message to The STAR, Quezon City department of public order and safety chief Elmo San Diego said they received no application for a permit to hold a rally or a march near Batasang Pambansa today. The Anonymous member reminded participants not to bring any form of weapon, adding that the event will be held to show the public’s reaction to the mishandling of the government committed by people in power. The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Information and Communications Technology Office yesterday underscored the need to fast track efforts to set up a more secure government website hosting facility following the latest hacking of government websites. The websites of the Insurance Commission, Southern Philippines Development Authority, Optical Media Board and that of the local government units of Bolinao, Pasig City, Pateros and the municipality of Basnud, Oriental Mindoro were defaced by members of Anonymous Philippines. Source: http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2013/11/05/1253167/palace-act-vs-hackers

Extra Life DDoS Attack: Children’s Charity Extra Life Website Hit By DDoS During Annual Gaming Marathon

Extra Life — a charity organization dedicated helping Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals through an annual gaming marathon — has been hit with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. According to Escapist Magazine, Extra Life raises money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals by taking pledges and then playing games — anything from video games to board games and tabletop miniatures — for 25 hours straight. Extra Life was in the middle of this year’s event, which began at 8 a.m. today and ends at 8 a.m. on November 3, when their website suddenly went down. As a result, pledges could not be taken. News of the DDoS attack was confirmed with a statement on the Extra Life Facebook page by founder Jeromy “Doc” Adams: “We’ve discovered that the Extra Life website experienced a DDoS attack against our datacenter,” the statement reads. “I am not sure what kind of person would DDoS a charitable initiative. I am so sorry that you are going through this frustration today. Our entire team is purely heartbroken that someone would do this. But it has happened. As frustrating as this is for everyone involved, it pales in comparison to what the kids we’re trying to save go through. That reality, for me personally, is about the only thing keeping me somewhat calm right now. “I am very angry and very sorry,” the statement continues. “You deserve better than this. The kids deserve better than this. Extra Life has given a lot of us some of the happiest moments in our lives. This is not one of those moments. Please hang with us through this. It is important that we spread the word. Please get on every form of social media you can and tell your friends what happened. We can overcome this together.” After a few of hours of downtime, the Extra Life website was back online. Many took to Facebook to vent their outrage that hackers would choose to DDoS a charity organization. “I understand DDoS’ing a website of a corrupt business or government, but…Why would someone DDoS this?” one user wrote. “May whoever did this lose their shoes and have every child in their neighborhood strew Legos in their path forever,” another user commented. A DDoS attack takes place when hackers use an army of infected computers to send traffic to a server, causing a shutdown in the process. Source: http://www.ibtimes.com/extra-life-ddos-attack-childrens-charity-extra-life-website-hit-ddos-during-annual-gaming-marathon

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Extra Life DDoS Attack: Children’s Charity Extra Life Website Hit By DDoS During Annual Gaming Marathon

12 year old Quebec boy Anonymous Hacker Pleads Guilty to DDOS Attack on Government Websites

A 12-year-old Quebec boy is responsible for hacking several government and police websites during the student uprising in spring 2012, creating computer havoc and causing $60,000 damage, court heard Thursday. Some sites were out of service for up to two days and the boy did it in the name of the activist/hacktivist group Anonymous. The Grade 5 student from the Montreal suburb of Notre-Dame- de-Grâce, whose actions were not politically motivated, traded pirated information to Anonymous for video games, court was told. The boy appeared in youth court Thursday dressed in his school uniform and accompanied by his father. He pleaded guilty to three charges related to the hacking of the websites, including those of Montreal police, the Quebec Institute of Public Health, Chilean government and some non-public sites. Police estimate damage to the sites at $60,000 but a more detailed report will be produced in court when the boy is sentenced next month. The little hacker, whose name can’t be published and is said to have been involved with computers since the age of nine, contributed to the crash of some sites and accessed information belonging to users and administrators. He had even issued a warning to others: “It’s easy to hack but do not go there too much, they will track you down.” Court heard the boy used three different computer attacks, one which resulted in a denial of service to those trying to access the websites and flooded servers, making them ineffective. In another method he would alter information and make it appear as the homepage. His third tactic involved exploiting security holes in order to access database servers. “And he told others how to do it,” a police expert testified in Montreal on Thursday. While others were arrested in the scheme, it was the boy who opened the door to the website attacks, court heard. “He saw it as a challenge, he was only 12 years old,” his lawyer said. “There was no political purpose.” In 2000, a 15-year-old Montreal boy, know as Mafiaboy, did an estimated $1.7 billion in damage through hacking. He was sentenced to eight months in youth detention and subsequently received several job offers in cybersecurity. Source: http://www.torontosun.com/2013/10/25/que-boy-12-pleads-guilty-to-hacking-government-websites