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4 Banks Respond to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Threats

The day after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters announced plans to launch a second wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks on five U.S. banks, SunTrust suffered intermittent outages and Bank of America and PNC said small numbers of their customers reported having trouble accessing their sites. But it remained unclear whether the problems were the result of an attack. U.S. Bank, which did not suffer any known outages or access issues, did, however, acknowledge that new attacks could be on the way. On Dec. 11, PNC used social media to warn consumers that site outages should be expected, but that account and online-banking credentials would remain secure. And one expert was advising banks to expect the worst, saying Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters’ second wave of attacks would likely be more fierce than the first. The online-monitoring site websitedown.com reported that about noon ET on Dec. 11, SunTrust Banks website suffered intermittent outages. But SunTrust executives declined to comment on the nature of the outages. BofA spokesman Mark Pipitone said that while BofA’s site suffered no overall outages, an isolated number of online-banking users reported problems accessing the site. “We’re aware of the reports of possible cyberattacks, and we’re monitoring our systems, which are fully operational,” Pipitone said in the early evening of Dec. 11. PNC spokeswoman Amy Vargo said some PNC customers may have experienced intermittent difficulty logging in on their first attempts. “We are aware of the situation and working to restore full access,” she said during the early evening of Dec. 11. “We are focused on minimizing disruption to our customers and will review the cause of this incident once full access is restored.” And U.S. Bank spokesman Tom Joyce told the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal that the bank is “taking all necessary steps” to prepare for more attacks. “It’s important to note that these denial-of-service attacks are designed to slow down banks’ websites and create a nuisance for consumers,” Joyce said. “Customers can be assured that their data and funds are secure.” The hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters named SunTrust, U.S. Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and PNC Financial Services Group as targets for its next wave of DDoS attacks. The group, in a Dec. 10 post on Pastebin , announced plans for what it portrays as “Phase 2 Operation Ababil” – a second campaign of attacks waged against leading U.S. banks to protest a YouTube movie trailer deemed offensive to Muslims. All five banks were targets – along with Wells Fargo, Capital One, Regions Bank, BB&T and HSBC – during the first wave of DDoS attacks , which ran from mid-September to mid-October. During that period, each bank’s website suffered intermittent outages of varying degrees. CapOne was the only institution targeted twice in the first wave (see CapOne Takes Second DDoS Hit ). PNC’s Communications Stand Out On Dec. 11, three of the five newly targeted banks were remaining quiet, declining to comment about the threat and steps they were taking, if any, to communicate with consumers about the expectation of more attacks. BofA acknowledged isolated reports from consumers who suffered difficulty logging in. PNC, the only bank to publicly outline details surrounding the DDoS attack it suffered in the first wave, however, immediately took steps to notify the public of the possibility for a second attack. Through Dec. 11 posts on the social-networking sites Facebook and Twitter , PNC forewarned online-banking customers that outages should be expected. “This potential threat could result in high volume of electronic traffic that may make it difficult for our customers to log onto online banking,” the bank stated on its Facebook page and website . “Please be assured that PNC’s website is protected by sophisticated encryption strategies that shield customer information and accounts. We have no information regarding timing, duration or intensity of this potential threat. Please continue to follow our page for additional updates.” Fiercer Attacks Ahead? Why these five banks have been targeted for a second attack is not clear. But John Walker , an independent security professional in London and member of the European Network and Information Security Agency’s security experts team, says banks should expect the new attacks to be more fierce than the first, as the hacktivists promised in their Dec. 10 post. “By showing the game can be taken to ever-increasing levels starts to focus the mind of the victim organizations as to their frailty,” Walker says. “They [the hacktivists] are, I believe, demonstrating their power.” Walker says banks learned valuable lessons during the first wave, which will provide them with tools to better prepare this time around. But they should not be overly confident in their abilities to stave off outages. “This style of attack has not even matured yet, and there is more to come,” he says. “The time has arrived for … more techno-savvy security – and more honesty in the boardroom – as to real-time security exposure before the event, not just after it has impacted the business.” Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/webinars/new-wave-ddos-attacks-how-to-prepare-respond-w-308

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4 Banks Respond to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Threats

Researchers uncover Tor-powered Skynet botnet

Rapid7 researchers have recently unearthed an unusual piece of malware that turned out to be crucial to the formation of an elusive botnet – dubbed Skynet by the researchers – whose existence has been…

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Researchers uncover Tor-powered Skynet botnet

U.K. hacker convicted for taking part in Anonymous attacks

22-year-old Christopher Weatherhead from Northampton, U.K., has been convicted on Thursday on one count of conspiracy to impair the operation of computers for his involvement in the DDoS campaign agai…

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U.K. hacker convicted for taking part in Anonymous attacks

British student found guilty of Anonymous PayPal Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

A British student has been convicted over his role in a series of denial of service attacks against PayPal, which cost the payment firm £3.5m. Christopher Weatherhead was part of an Anonymous gang that attacked PayPal in protest at the firm’s decision not to handle payments being made to whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, in an attack dubbed ‘Operation Payback’. According to multiple reports, the jury hearing the case took little more than two hours to reach their guilty verdict. Three other members of the gang had already pleaded guilty but Weatherhead had argued he had not taken part in the attacks, claiming his role had been limited to operating Anonymous chat rooms. The judge presiding over the case, Peter Testar, told the defendants that he regarded the offences as serious. Weatherhead, who was a student at Northampton University at the time of the attacks, was found guilty under the Criminal Law Act 1977, and could face jail time as a result of the guilty verdict. The Metropolitan Police arrested five youths in 2011 in connection with Operation Payback, while other suspected members were arrested by the Dutch authorities. Operation Payback had initially begun as a protest against the music industry’s anti-piracy stance, but the focus changed after Wikileaks published a series of leaked diplomatic memos. Several financial services firms including PayPal, MasterCard and Visa withdrew services from Wikileaks, and as a result drew the ire of the Anonymous activists. Source: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2230251/british-student-found-guilty-of-anonymous-paypal-ddos-attacks

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British student found guilty of Anonymous PayPal Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

Gameover gang uses Cutwail botnet to swell its own

The hackers behind the Gameover variant of the popular Zeus banking Trojan have rented the massive Cutwail botnet in order to send out millions of fake emails carrying the malware, warns Dell SecureWo…

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Gameover gang uses Cutwail botnet to swell its own

Hacktivist Hints at New Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

The hacktivists are now letting their words speak for their actions. For the third time in one month, a source claiming to be part of the self-proclaimed hacktivist group known as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has granted an interview to discuss the wave of high-profile distributed denial of service attacks on U.S. banks. During the recent interview with Flashpoint Global Partners , an international consulting firm, the hacktivist representative said more attacks would be waged and that methods of attacks would diverge, until a YouTube movie trailer deemed by the group to cast Islam in a negative light is removed from the Internet. “We have done what we had promised,” the source said. “If the film isn’t removed, we’ll use our other abilities according to the new conditions.” No New Attacks Since Sept. 18, the group has taken credit for attacks on 10 leading U.S. banks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC, U.S. Bank, CapitalOne, HSBC, SunTrust, Regions and BB&T. No new attacks have been claimed by the group since mid-October. In early November, Webster Bank and Zions Bancorp also suffered from DDoS attacks, which caused intermittent outages to their online-banking sites for several hours. While the attacks were not linked directly to Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, Zions spokesman Rob Brough said the bank did not know who was behind the attack. “There’s no way for us to know if the attack against us was just the next one [in the series of attacks waged by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam] or if it was just a coincidence,” Brough said. “What I can tell you is that we were well-prepared because of the other incidents. When we recognized that it was a DDoS attack, we had plans in place.” DDoS and Fraud? The attacks have been concerning for two reasons: customer frustration with online-banking inaccessibility and the possibility of fraud being perpetrated in the background. On Sept. 17, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, issued a warning about DDoS being waged to mask incidents of account takeover occurring simultaneously. In their alert, the FBI and FS-ISAC note recent attacks that linked DDoS to fraud. “In some of the incidents, before and after unauthorized transactions occurred, the bank or credit union suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against their public Web site(s) and/or Internet Banking URL,” the alert states. “The DDoS attacks were likely used as a distraction for bank personnel to prevent them from immediately identifying a fraudulent transaction, which in most cases is necessary to stop the wire transfer” (see High Risk: What Alert Means to Banks ). So far, no bank has reported fraud linked to DDoS attacks waged by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, but security experts question what might really be taking place in the background. Questioning Consultants’ Competency The latest interview with Izz ad-Din al-Qassam marks the third time a member claiming affiliation with the group has spoken out on the attacks. On Oct. 31, ABC News was granted an e-mail interview, and on Nov. 7 technology news site Softpedia was given e-mailed insights. During all interviews, alleged members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam group stressed the group was not supported by any nation-state, government or other hacktivist group, and that all of its members were merely tech-savvy volunteers with a common mission to see the YouTube video removed (see Hacktivist Speaks Out About DDoS ). In the most recent interview, the respondent defends Izz ad-Din al-Qassam’s purpose as well as the efficacy of its attacks. “Many of [the] technical comments during the attacks have made us doubtful about [the] technical competence of American companies’ security consultants,” the respondent said, when asked by Flashpoint if the botnets it used also have attacked web-hosting companies and Internet service providers. “Many of [the] technical statements about this case are not scientific, reliable or significant,” the source added. Break Suspicious, But Expected An Oct. 23 Pastebin post notes the group’s plans to temporarily halt attacks in honor of a three-day Muslim holiday. Pastebin is the public online forum Izz ad-Din al-Qassam has used to communicate updates about its attacks. The continued break from attacks is curious, says Mike Smith , a security evangelist and DDoS specialist at Web security provider Akamai Technologies. It’s just difficult to know who is behind which attacks, he says. Speculating is pointless, he says. What is clear, however, is that banking institutions and other organizations are continually targeted, and staying ahead of these attacks, regardless of who wages them, is a necessity. “We get two or more large attacks per week against our entire customer base and countless smaller ones,” Smith says. But connecting those to one hacktivist group over another is nearly impossible, he adds. “Some of those targets are financial services, some are not.” Information-sharing shortens response time, he adds. “It’s always tough to be the first target when a new attacker or technique appears because you have to work your way to a diagnosis and implement blocking: things that take time,” Smith says. “However, good incident managers and organizations doing threat intelligence share what they know with each other, so that during subsequent attacks, although of the same magnitude and lethality, the targeted organizations know what indicators there are to the start of the attack and what techniques worked the best in previous attacks.” For DDoS protection against your eCommerce site click here . Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/hacktivist-hints-at-new-ddos-attacks-a-5325/op-1

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Hacktivist Hints at New Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

Protecting Your Network Against Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ Attacks

As leaders in their field, IT managers are tasked with the burden of not only managing but protecting company networks. Dedicated servers can be adversely affected by DDoS attackers, as their firewalls can be penetrated and flooded with malicious communication requests. Before assessing how you can prevent DDoS attacks it is first important to understand what they are and where they come from. What Are DDoS Attacks? A DDoS attack attempts to render a network or machine inaccessible or unresponsive for any considerable length of time. DDoS attacks typically saturate a network with requests as to slow, disrupt or obstruct communication from the intended user. In some cases, a DDoS attack may overwhelm network firewalls, leaving the problem up to IP providers to fix. Typical symptoms may include the following: a high volume of spam emails, in-accessibility of websites or services or exceptionally slow network performance. Either way, a DDoS attack can adversely affect business by bringing down a website, company application or cloud based computing platform. Here are a few suggestions to go about mitigating the risk associated with DDoS attacks: Preventative Measures Against Attack Properly setup of network firewalls are a must. These days, modern firewalls can be configured to deny unusual protocols from un-identified IP addresses. For instance, if your network firewall is configured to block traffic from sources it can’t identify, it may drop any or all illegitimate service requests as to maintain a normalized bandwidth threshold. Though IP bottlenecks are not always a symptom of DDoS attacks, configuring a firewall to block traffic incoming from specific ports is a form of preventative maintenance. As stated earlier, DDoS attackers may flood a system as to render it unresponsive. Rate limiting switches detect incoming traffic and may filter or slow IPs in such a way that prevents them from flooding the system. Many switches have wide-area-networks fail overs, which adjust incoming IP filtering thresholds automatically. Again, it is important to configure these systems correctly in order for them to remain effective. If system upgrades are in order then IT managers need to weigh the cost against the risk posed by DDoS attacks. Costs To Consider Personnel Costs – If attacked, how many IT workers will it take to address and remedy the problem? Support Calls – Do you really want to be tied up on the phone calling tech support? Factor in the time spent at the help desk Lost Business – If a DDoS attack causes downtime to your website, how much revenue may be lost? Lost Customers – Investing in network protection means you are also investing in consumer confidence. How many customers may be lost due to downtime. Brand Reputation – When network outages occur, brands may suffer damage to their reputation. It is important to consider this last factor. Lastly, it is important to remember that DDoS attacks may also occur by accident. Some sites may experience a denial of service when they experience a high amount of traffic. In any case where a popular website links to a trending event, traffic may suddenly spike creating a unintentional denial of service. Focus your energies on preventing the malicious attacks and it’ll be smooth sailing for your business or enterprise. For DDoS protection against your eCommerce site click here . Source: http://www.colocationamerica.com/blog/protecting-your-network-against-ddos-attacks.htm

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Protecting Your Network Against Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ Attacks

Evolving Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ Attacks Force Defenders to Adapt

Distributed denial-of-service attacks get bigger and combine application-layer exploits requiring defenders to be more agile. n the past, attackers using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to take down Web sites or network servers typically adopted one of two tactics: Flooding the site with a deluge of data or overwhelming an application server with seemingly valid requests. Companies concerned about denial-of-service attacks have generally focused more on mitigating data floods, also known as volumetric or infrastructure attacks. Yet, increasingly attackers are using a hybrid approach, using multiple vectors to attack. The attacks that hit financial firms in September and October, for example, often used a massive flood of data packets that would overwhelm a victim’s network connection, while a much smaller subset of traffic would target vulnerable applications functions, consuming server resources. “It is almost like sending a whole squadron of tanks and then have an assault team that can go in and be mores stealthy in taking out their targets,” says Carlos Morales, vice president of global sales engineering and operations for network protection firm Arbor Networks. “It broke the model that people had for stopping these things.” The one-two punch is potent. Many financial firms thought they had the defenses in place to defeat such attacks but had problems staying accessible during the onslaught. Companies prepared to handle application-layer attacks or smaller volumetric attacks could not handle the 20Gbps or more that saturated their Internet connection. Even a gateway that can keep up with 10Gbps connection speed cannot deal with twice as much–or more–traffic sent to the same server. A recent report from network-security firm Prolexic found that the average attack bandwidth had increased to nearly 5Gbps, with 20Gbps attacks quite common. In a year, the average volume of attacks had doubled, the firm found. “The late Senator Ted Stevens got mocked for saying that the Internet is a ‘series of tubes,’” says Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, a content-delivery and network-security firm. “But the Internet is a series of tubes, and you can only fit so much through it.” Companies must start creating a multi-layered approach to stopping distributed denial-of-service attacks, according to mitigation experts. The greatest amount of attack volume should be stopped inside a provider’s network, away from the company’s links to the Internet. Trying to over-provision your network for the worst case scenario will likely not work and will be very expensive to boot. “Even if you are a large bank in the U.S., you are doing less than 10Gbps of traffic across all the properties of your network combined,” says Cloudflare’s Prince. “If you have to over-provision that by 10x, that is wasting a lot of resources.” By using a service provider to filter out most of the spurious traffic at the edge of the Internet, companies can pay attention to the data that actually enters their network. Collecting information on the traffic can help a company to better develop defenses for future attacks as well, even if a company does not have the resources to identify attacks in real time. Yet, faster detection and more agile response can mean the difference between successful defenses and downtime. “Seeing an impact and understanding that there is an attack happening is not necessarily going to happen at the same time,” says Neal Quinn, chief operating officer for attack-mitigation service Prolexic. For many companies, the threat of attacks is not over, but rather, just beginning. The most recent attacks did not start with the financial industry; other industries have been hit by similar attacks for almost the last year. Companies should not expect it to end there either. The holiday season tends to be a popular time for attackers to attempt to extort money from retailers by threatening denial-of-service attacks. “It is traditionally a very busy time of year for these attacks,” Prolexic’s Quinn says. “If anything, organizations should make themselves more aware of how well they can handle these attacks.” Source: http://www.darkreading.com/security-services/167801101/security/perimeter-security/240142616/evolving-ddos-attacks-force-defenders-to-adapt.html

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Evolving Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ Attacks Force Defenders to Adapt

Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ Attacks From Anonymous Cost PayPal £3.5 Million of Damage

The distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) from hacktivist Anonymous has cost PayPal more than  €4.3 million . The attack which was named Operation Payback  were initially aimed at companies that opposed internet piracy, but switched to companies like Mastercard, Visa and PayPal after they refused to process payments to WikiLeaks . After that attack PayPal -the global leader in online money transfer and payments has paid around £3.5 million defend and arm itself against such kind distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. In a report BBC said that more than one hundred skilled employees from eBay, PayPal’s parent company, spent almost three weeks working on DDoS-attack-related issues and that PayPal had bought software and hardware to defend itself against further attacks. In all, the total cost of this work came to £3.5 million. This details have been revealed in a court case at Southwark Crown Court where a defendant, Christopher Weatherhead (studying at Northampton University when who allegedly took part in the campaign), is facing charges of conspiring to impair the operation of computers. He has pleaded not guilty to conspiring to impair the operation of computers between 1 August 2010 and 22 January 2011. Sandip Patel , prosecuting, said the group caused PayPal “enormous economic harm” . Mr Patel said they used distributed denial of service, or DDoS, which flooded the targets computers with enormous amounts of online requests. Target websites would crash and users would be directed to a page displaying the message: “You’ve tried to bite the Anonymous hand. You angered the hive and now you are being stung.” Mr Patel said: “This case, simply put, is about hackers who used the internet to attack and disable computer systems – colloquially described as cyber-attackers or vandals.” He said Mr Weatherhead, who used the online name Nerdo, posted plans on an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel encouraging an attack on PayPal. He said PayPal was the victim of a series of attacks “which caused considerable damage to its reputation and loss of trade”. Source: http://www.voiceofgreyhat.com/2012/11/DDoS-Attack-From-Anonymous-Cost-PayPal-3.5-Million.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=identica

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Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ Attacks From Anonymous Cost PayPal £3.5 Million of Damage