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
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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/
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US Officials Believe North Korea Was Involved In Sony Hacks
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/
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DDoS Attacks Hit Equity Poker Network Full Flush Poker
London teen pleads guilty to Spamhaus DDoS
Sentence will be passed in January next year A 17 year-old Londoner has pleaded guilty to a series of denial-of-service attacks against internet exchanges and the Spamhaus anti-spam service last year.…
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London teen pleads guilty to Spamhaus DDoS
London teen pleads guilty to SpamHaus DDoS attack
The London teen behind the massive denial-of-service attack (DDoS) on SpamHaus and Cloudflare has pleaded guilty. Technology blogger Brian Krebs reported over the weekend that 17-year-old Sean Nolan McDonough, also known by his hacker alias “Narko,” pleaded guilty on Dec. 10 to computer misuse and money laundering in connection with the attack. McDonough was arrested in September 2013 after he played a role in the March 19, 2013 DDoS attacks aimed at Spamhaus, a Dutch anti-spam group and international nonprofit. SpamHaus later moved its servers behind CloudFlare, which then pushed the attackers to devote their efforts toward the company’s network. The attack sent 85Gbps of traffic. The U.K. National Crime Agency told Krebs that, “court reporting restrictions are in place in respect to a juvenile offender, [and] as a consequence the NCA will not be releasing further detail.” Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/sean-nolan-mcdonough-narko-pleads-guilty/article/388387/
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London teen pleads guilty to SpamHaus DDoS attack
Could Tor fall victim to a DDoS attack in 2015?
Tor users could be targeted by police next year as governments seek to combat crime and reduce political dissent, according to a researcher at the security firm Cloudmark. Andrew Conway claimed the anonymity network is “reasonably fragile”, with police able to unmask service providers by comparing traffic spikes, generated by distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, from just a small number of endpoints. He added that the network was at risk of a complete shutdown if a government decided to launch a massive DDoS attack against it, which would overload the system with traffic. Conway said: “There are only a few thousand endpoints where Tor connects to the rest of the internet. Attacking those with a DDoS is well within the capability of many organisations and states.” “I think some oppressive regimes may decide that they have had enough of their dissidents using it and just want to shut the thing down, or some group in law enforcement may decide the same.” The security of Tor was called into question when the FBI arrested Blake ‘Defcon’ Benthall in November for his alleged work on the second iteration of Silk Road, an ecommerce site specialising in contraband that could only be accessed through Tor. Conway added that the police mole planted in the second Silk Road admin team was “probably” involved in the arrests that caused the first version’s collapse, and that he suspected they had used the DDoS and endpoint approach to monitor network traffic. Despite this, he said police are still unable to track down Tor user’s IP addresses, which would be necessary to identify those purchasing contraband online. “[Tor] still does give a level of anonymity for people looking for child pornography, but not if they are providing it,” he said. Source: http://www.cbronline.com/news/security/could-tor-fall-victim-to-a-ddos-attack-in-2015-4468576
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Could Tor fall victim to a DDoS attack in 2015?
Channel mis-selling firewalls leads to DDoS attacks
The channel mis-selling firewalls to their customers as protection against DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks is partly to blame for the escalating number of attacks on enterprises. Dave Larson, CTO of Corero claims that tTraditional security solutions such as firewalls and IPS technology can’t handle the complexity of the modern DDoS attack – and even the more recent next generation firewalls can only provide a marginal benefit in fighting the attacks. Nevertheless, a survey conducted by Corero in 2013 had 40 percent of organisations stating they were relying on firewalls to protect them against DDoS attacks. “We see confusion in the market every day. DDoS protection vendors are fighting for mindshare with the end user community because there is still a vast misunderstanding about what DDoS is all about, and what it takes to eliminate the problem,” says Larson. “The problem is that firewall solutions are not well positioned to show the extent of the problem. Most organisations are shocked at the level and frequency of DDoS activity in their environment once they deploy a targeted in-line DDoS solution that is capable of exposing the threat.” He continues: “Proper DDoS protection is more than a ‘checkbox’ on a traditional security tool . Clicking the’DDoS on’ button on a firewall is not going to protect the business from the sophisticated and adaptive DDoS attacks that are taking down organisations, and distracting security teams from breach activity,” he explains. Larson concedes the channel is not deliberately advising customers to purchase the wrong protection, but “it is a matter of better education around why purpose built in-line appliance-based protection will allow their customers to properly defend against the modern DDoS attack landscape.” “There is no question that firewall technology is a tried and true security solution—a requirement for the majority of businesses. They key here is that that the channel can and should introduce dedicated DDoS protection as an additional layer to their overall security architecture. Implementing first line of defence technology to defeat DDoS at the very edge of the network allows all downstream technology infrastructure , like firewalls and intrusion prevention systems (IPS), to perform as intended. “There is a real opportunity for the channel to gain mind share , and ultimately revenue growth by understanding, and tapping into the DDoS market, this opportunity would complement the selling of traditional security solutions rather than replace them.” Source: http://www.channelpro.co.uk/news/8865/channel-mis-selling-firewalls-leads-to-ddos-attacks
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Channel mis-selling firewalls leads to DDoS attacks
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
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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
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PTS calls for concerted action after TeliaSonera DDoS attack
Sony Reportedly Fights Back Against Hackers With DDoS Attacks Of Their Own
As many have heard by now, hackers have been chipping away at Sony Pictures, leaking information in the process, such as the salaries of Sony execs, celebrity information, email exchanges, and more. It also does not appear that the hacks are slowing down or that they could be stopping anytime soon. However if you thought that maybe Sony would be taking this lying down, you would be mistaken. According to reports, it seems that Sony Pictures has decided to fight back. How are they doing this? Well by attacking the hackers themselves in the form of a DDoS attack through the use of Amazon Web Services which has data centers located in Tokyo and Singapore. This is actually a tactic used to combat against movie and music piracy to help knock the servers hosting the files offline, but in this case, Sony is hoping that they are able to knock the hackers themselves offline too. It is unclear as to how effective their efforts have been so far, but it’s refreshing to see Sony go on the offensive. So far the hackers claim to have stolen as much as 100TB of Sony Pictures’ files which includes payroll information, financial information, budgets, and even feature films, some of which have already been leaked online. Source: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/12/sony-reportedly-fights-back-against-hackers-with-ddos-attacks-of-their-own/?utm_source=mainrss
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Sony Reportedly Fights Back Against Hackers With DDoS Attacks Of Their Own