Category Archives: DDoS Vendors

Cloud security: Integrated global CDN with DDoS mitigation and WAF

Applications are becoming more accessible on the web across all industries including gaming, e-commerce, software, and media. This is great for reaching new customers around the globe, but along with …

Read More:
Cloud security: Integrated global CDN with DDoS mitigation and WAF

DDoS attacks rage on, primarily impacting U.S. and Chinese entities

Organizations in the U.S. and China should be especially aware of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, as more than half of them in Q2 of this year were aimed at the two countries. Kaspersky Lab’s “DDoS Intelligence Report Q2 2015” found that from April until the end of June this year, DDoS attacks impacted 79 countries, with most, 77 percent, affecting only 10 countries. In addition to China and the U.S., South Korea, Canada, Russia and France accounted for a large portion of attacks. The cybersecurity company defined a single attack as an incident during which there was “no break in botnet activity lasting longer than 24 hours.” If the same entity was attacked by the same botnet but with a 24 hour gap in activity, the two incidents would be considered separat e. The longest attack recorded during this past quarter lasted 205 hours, or eight and a half days. The peak number of attacks clocked in at 1,960 on May 7, and the low, at 73 attacks, occurred on June 25. The popularity of these attacks stems from the ease with which they can be arranged, said Andrey Pozhogin, senior product marketing manager at Kaspersky Lab North America, in emailed comments to SCMagazine.com. “Today, it is much easier to launch a DDoS attack,” he wrote. “Suddenly, you don’t have to be an expert in the field – all the power and potential damage is available to you with a few clicks. It’s also relatively cheap to commission a DDoS attack.” He noted that some online services charge as little as $50 for an attack that can cause serious damage to a company’s reputation, as well as financial losses. An average DDoS attack can range in cost to a company, depending on its size, anywhere from $52,000 to $444,000, Pozhogin said. As far as days of the week to be attacked, Sunday was the most popular day, accounting for 16.6 percent of them, and Tuesday was the least popular with 12.1 percent. Even as companies attempt to beef up their protection, it’s nearly impossible to stay ahead of the attackers and their tools. “As long as a company continues to focus on its core business it will not be able to match the resources poured into bypassing outdated protection and staying ahead of the attackers,” Pozhogin said. That said, cybersecurity firms’ technology can assist in keeping attackers at bay and enterprises’ sites running, he reminded. Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/kaspersky-lab-releases-q2-ddos-report/article/431034/

View article:
DDoS attacks rage on, primarily impacting U.S. and Chinese entities

Curriculum Protests: DDoS attacks launched on official, pan-blue Web sites

In what it said was support for the ongoing curriculum protests, hacker group Anonymous Asia yesterday launched a third wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the Web sites of two political parties and a government ministry. The Web sites of the New Party, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the KMT Taipei branch office and the Ministry of Economic Affairs were attacked for more than an hour. According to reports by Storm Media Group, Anonymous launched its first wave of DDoS attacks under the name “Anonymous #Op Taiwan” on Friday last week by locking down the Presidential Office and Ministry of Education Web sites for five hours. A notice released by the group said: “We are everywhere and nowhere. Taiwan’s police are not exempt [from our attacks], and all police must take responsibility for this incident. We cannot permit the use of violence or pepper spray on peacefully demonstrating people. When you hurt the Taiwanese people, revenge will be sought. We cannot forget, support us and the corrupt officials will be afraid of us. Taiwan’s government, expect us.” On Sunday, the group launched a second wave of DDoS attacks against the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of National Defense, the National Academy of Educational Research and CtiTV, a television station generally sympathetic toward the KMT, the report said. In a Facebook post on Sunday, New Party Chairperson Yok Mu-ming (???) said the DDoS attacks were serious national security concerns. “Do we not see China as our enemy and try to prevent Beijing hacking our Web sites? What I’m seeing now is like the opening salvoes of a Taiwanese civil war,” Yok said. Yok called on the public to put pressure on the Presidential Office and National Security Bureau to look into the attacks and find out who was behind them. “We must know if the motives are against curriculum changes or if there are other ulterior motives,” he said. Shortly after Yok’s Facebook post the New Party Web site was hacked. Anonymous Asia said on Facebook: “Yok Mu-ming, are you looking for us? Here we come.” Anonymous Asia is a loose coalition of hackers and Internet activists. The group describes itself as “an internet gathering” with “a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives” and has been known for high-profile public DDoS attacks on government, religious, and corporate Web sites. Source: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2015/08/04/2003624588

More here:
Curriculum Protests: DDoS attacks launched on official, pan-blue Web sites

Planned Parenthood websites downed in DDoS attack

Planned Parenthood websites have gone down and are, according to the main page, undergoing maintenance. In a statement emailed to SCMagazine.com on Thursday, Dawn Laguens, executive VP of Planned Parenthood, said that the Planned Parenthood websites were the target of a DDoS attack. “Today, the Planned Parenthood websites experienced a wide scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a hacker tactic to overwhelm websites with massive amounts of traffic to block any legitimate traffic from getting in,” Laguens said. The websites were back online shortly after the attack, but are scheduled to remain down throughout Thursday for security purposes, Laguens said, adding that during this time visitors are being redirected to the organization’s Facebook pages. Following reports that politically motivated attackers released website databases, Planned Parenthood announced on Monday that it is investigating possible unauthorized access to its systems. Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/planned-parenthood-websites-downed-in-ddos-attack/article/429563/

Taken from:
Planned Parenthood websites downed in DDoS attack

Unhinged Linux backdoor still poses a nuisance, if not a threat

When is a door not a door? When slapdash coding turns it into a glorified ‘off’ switch Internet Igors have stitched together a new Linux backdoor. Fortunately for internet hygiene the botnet agent – which packs a variety of powerful features – is faulty and only partially functional.…

Taken from:
Unhinged Linux backdoor still poses a nuisance, if not a threat

NJ Casino’s DDoS Attack Still Under Investigation

On July 2, a cyber attack was coordinated against several New Jersey-based gambling websites and continued throughout the July 4th holiday weekend. At least four online casinos were affected and experience downtime, and we placed on alert as the State Division of Gaming Enforcement commenced their investigation. Although this is the first time the country had seen an attack on online gaming websites, it isn’t the first time that hackers have targeted casinos. Back in 2014, Sands Casino in Las Vegas had experienced an IT catastrophe that led to the shutdown of PCS and servers, wiping many of their hard drives clean. Bloomberg Business writers Ben Elgin and Michael Riley explained that this wasn’t an Ocean’s Eleven heist; someone had a personal vendetta against the company, specifically CEO and majority owner Sheldon Adelson. Frank Cilluffo, director of George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, later disclosed that they believe this digital conflict was perpetrated by Iran. Many feared that this was the beginning of a cyber war, as the nation’s enemies discovered a way to injure American companies to the point that it would incite a government response. Surprisingly, Sands had managed to keep most of the details of the incident under wraps for almost a year. At the time, it was the biggest strike on US corporate infrastructure, prior to the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack from last November. Fast forward to this year’s July 4th weekend, David Rebuck of the State Division of Gaming Enforcement Director confirms that there was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, where the 30-minute downtime occurred due to the hackers flooding the sites with data, rendering the them inoperative. Atlantic City’s Bill Hughes Jr., head of Cybersecurity of law firm Cooper Levenson, compares the attack to a traffic gridlock, where “the parkway becomes a parking lot.” The hackers threatened to launch a more powerful attack within 24 hours and revealed they would sustain this breach unless the casino operators paid a ransom to be paid in bitcoins, an internet currency that has proven popular with online criminals even though it does have its legitimate uses. Luckily, no further attacks were reported to the State Division of Gaming Enforcement. While gambling was legalized in Atlantic City in 1976 according to information portal Mayfair Casinos, online casinos had only been legal since 2013 which makes this strike rather sudden. Sudden, maybe, but not random. Rebuck tells NJ.com that they have an idea of who was behind this hacking incident, saying that this individual is a known actor and has a history of this types of attacks. Rebuck did not divulge any more details of the perpetrator, along with the websites impacted and amount paid in ransom. Despite the occurrences in the past year, University of Nevada’s Center for Gaming Research Director David Schwartz says that American online casinos are still not a major target for hackers, unlike gaming sites hosted on servers outside of the country which usually have a demand for ransom. Source: http://www.casinoscamreport.com/2015/07/22/nj-casinos-cyber-attack-still-under-investigation/

Read the original:
NJ Casino’s DDoS Attack Still Under Investigation

It's official: The average DDoS attack size is increasing

New global DDoS attack data from Arbor Networks shows strong growth in the average size of DDoS attacks, from both a bits-per-second and packets-per-second perspective. The largest attack monitor…

See the original post:
It's official: The average DDoS attack size is increasing

Bitcoin Extortion Campaigns Expanding DDoS Attacks to a Wider Array of Business Sectors

Recent FBI investigations and open source reporting reveal that extortion campaigns conducted via e-mails threatening Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to expand targets from unregulated activities, such as illegal gaming activity, to now include legitimate business operations. The increase in scope has resulted in additional attacks with Bitcoin ransom amounts trending upwards as well. First identified approximately one year ago, Bitcoin extortion campaigns originally focused on targets unlikely to contact law enforcement for assistance. In early April 2015, the extortion campaigns began regularly contacting legitimate businesses operating in the private sector. In a typical scenario, a short-term DDoS attack is conducted on a victim’s web site lasting for approximately one hour. The DDoS is followed by an e-mail containing an extortion demand for payment via Bitcoin. If the victim has not paid the demanded payment, there is usually a second, more powerful DDoS attack within 24 hours, which lasts for an additional hour. This is followed by a second e-mail warning and extortion demand with an increased price. In most cases, victim companies have successfully mitigated the attack using third party DDoS mitigating services rather than paying the ransom. Technical Details The first DDoS attack is usually delivered prior to the sending of a ransom demand at 20-40 Gigabytes per second (Gbps) with a duration of approximately one hour. After the initial DDoS attack, an extortion e-mail is sent to the victim introducing the attacker, highlighting the initial demonstrative DDoS attack, and demanding payment in Bitcoin (ranging from 20-40) to ensure no further DDoS attacks are conducted against the business. If payment does not occur within 24 hours, a second demonstrative DDoS is generally conducted at a higher rate (40-50 Gbps) for an additional hour followed by an additional extortion e-mail. The types of DDoS attacks primarily consist of Simple Service Discovery Protocol (SSDP) and Network Time Protocol (NTP) reflection/amplification attacks with the occasional SYN-flood and, most recently, WordPress XML-RPC reflection/amplification attacks. Source: https://publicintelligence.net/fbi-bitcoin-extortion-campaigns/

Original post:
Bitcoin Extortion Campaigns Expanding DDoS Attacks to a Wider Array of Business Sectors