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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

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AbleGamers’ weird weekend of porn stars, charity and a worries over a DDoS attack [correction]

Carbon Poker Crash and Possible DDoS Attacks Highlight Need for Legalization

Recent happenings at what was considered one of the more reliable and trustworthy offshore online poker rooms, Carbon Poker, is simply furthering the case for regulated online poker in the United States. Anyone calling for a ban of online gambling in the U.S. should pay particular attention to what has taken place at Carbon Poker over the past couple weeks, as these are the types of online poker operators that will survive a federal online gambling ban. If Sheldon Adelson gets his way, regulated sites like WSOP.com would be forced to shut down and sites like Carbon would continue to fill the void. In the past couple weeks the site experienced several significant problems that have left many players concerned about the safety of their accounts and their personal information, as well as with the overall integrity of the games at the site. Server crash leads to data breach The first issue occurred during one of the biggest tournament days in Carbon Poker’s history. On November 23, the Main Event of the Carbon Poker Online Poker Series, along with dozens of other tournaments at the site, were running when the Carbon Poker servers’ crashed, bringing everything to a screeching halt. Site-wide server crashes are rare, but they do happen. Unfortunately for Carbon, this was not a typical server crash, which is bad enough in its own right. According to multiple reports by poker players on social media sites and on the poker forums, the server crash not only caused widespread disconnections, but also caused hole cards to change mid-hand for players still able to log in and play, and even more worrisome, customers were inexplicably able to gain access to other players’ accounts when they tried to log back on to the site. Players reported that this first of its kind (to my knowledge) technical glitch, not only allowed them access to other Carbon Poker’s players accounts, but they were capable of gambling with those funds (including players that were active on the site when the servers crashed), as well as being able to see the accountholders sensitive personal information. A DDoS superuser? As concerning as the server crash and data breach were, things got even worse this weekend when, after several days of unexplained and consistent disconnect issues, widespread rumors began to take hold that targeted DDoS attacks were behind the ongoing technical issues, and were being used to win pots. Following pages of frustration over the ongoing disconnects, the DDoS rumors took hold with an out of left field (something that is not uncommon on 2+2) accusation: I found the hacker that is disconnecting the server. He builds big pots and once he min-raises he crashes the server and scoops the pot. His username is L4ss3m4jj4n. He did it to me a few times and took quite a bit from me at PLO. I then followed him and watched him do it to others. I emailed support so lets see what happens.” And from there it escalated: “Guys, I would normally say this is just somebody coming up with a wild conspiracy theory, but this is serious, everybody should open up this table, it’s table 24 in the $215/125k, something is super super fishy about the way L4ss3m4jj4n is playing, every disconnect has benefited him so far, it seems too obvious if you watch it for a few of the disconnects.” “second time i’m witnessing him betting in big pot and a disconnect taking place.” “Kh8s9d7h board he checks, phat1cat bets 1888 into 3750, l4ss3m4jj4n minraises to 3776 and disconnect.” In addition to the forum gossip, the potential DDoS superuser was also discussed/mentioned on social media by well-known poker players and poker commentators. Click here and also here. As the story began to unfold, over 100 players started monitoring this person’s play as it was being live-streamed on Twitch.com, and at the same time were furiously contacting Carbon Poker customer support en masse to have something done about the situation. You can read a good summary (for those that can’t handle 200 pages of 2+2 posts) of what took place at Carbon Poker/Merge Gaming here. It should be stated, that whether this was a concerted DDOS attack by some nefarious player(s), or if the sites are simply experiencing ongoing technical issues is unclear. What is clear is that unregulated sites make it much harder for players to be treated fairly and properly compensated when these things occur. It also shows the inability of players on unregulated sites to take their grievances to a regulatory body that oversees the site. The important takeaway is, if these types of issues are occurring at Carbon Poker, considered one of the top unregulated online poker sites still serving the U.S. market, what is happening at the other, more suspect, operators? Source: http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/networks-and-rooms/12083-carbon-poker-crash-and-possible-ddos-attacks-highlight-need-for-legalization/

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Carbon Poker Crash and Possible DDoS Attacks Highlight Need for Legalization

Fort Lauderdale Website Under DDoS Attack Again

The City of Fort Lauderdale announced Wednesday that it may have to disconnect its Internet service at different points due to another attempt at a denial of service attack on the city’s website. Fort Lauderdale recently saw its home page and the website for Mayor Jack Seiler both go through denial of service attacks at the hands of Anonymous. The hacker collective launched the DDoS attack to try to change the homeless feeding ordinance and other city rules. The Anonymous DDoS attack lasted for several hours during the first attack which kept the home page inaccessible for several hours. The city said Wednesday that it is working with its Internet Service Provider to mitigate risk and safeguard the system. However, the city said there may be service interruptions and intermittent website performance due to the possible new attack. Source: http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Fort-Lauderdale-Website-Under-Attack-Again-284672121.html

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Fort Lauderdale Website Under DDoS Attack Again

Summary of DDoS Attacks this Holiday Season

A number of high-profile distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks have taken place over the past few days, and it is expected that more will occur as we draw closer to the holidays. The attacks began early last week when a hacker who is associated with Anonymous orchestrated a DDoS attack against the websites for the Supreme Court of Canada and the Ottawa Police Forces. The DDoS attack was preceded by a hack against the City of Ottawa, during which the attacker replaced the website’s homepage with an image of a dancing banana. According to the hacker who has claimed responsibility for the attacks, the DDoS campaign was meant to respond to the arrest of a teen that had allegedly made more than 30 emergency 9-1-1 calls across North America. The hacker believes the teen was framed and is trying to help him clear his name. Following a busy Thanksgiving weekend, which included the Sony breach, Cyber Monday saw a DDoS attack against DNSimple, a domain management provider. The attack, which lasted approximately 12 hours, sustained traffic of up to 25Gbps and about 50 million packets per second sent to DNSimple’s servers. Finally, a DDoS attack launched on Tuesday by Lizard Squad, a group well known for this type of attack, succeeded in bringing down the servers at Blizzard Entertainment, a gaming enterprise known for the popular World of Warcraft computer game franchise. Just a day earlier, Lizard Squad had succeeded in using a DDoS campaign to bring down Xbox Live, much to the frustration of shoppers who had purchased the gaming console on Cyber Monday. The attacks on the Canadian government websites, DNSimple, and Blizzard Entertainment suggest that high-volume DDoS attacks are on the rise. In fact, Verisign, a Virginia-based security firm, has been tracking this trend throughout the third quarter. Over the course of its investigation, it has noted an increase of as much as 60 percent quarter-on-quarter in 2014 for some companies. Researchers at Verisign recommend that companies invest in advanced DDoS protection solutions. This is especially true as we approach the holidays, for this type of attack spikes around this time of year. And with Lizard Squad preparing for additional DDoS attacks, their advice could not be more perfectly timed. It looks like it’s going to be a busy holiday season. Source: http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/top-security-stories/ddos-attacks-ramp-up-for-the-holidays/

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Summary of DDoS Attacks this Holiday Season

Google reels under DDoS attack

Google, it seems, has the eye of Sauron upon it. About 10:30 am IST, all of the monolith’s services went offline, including Gmail and the all important Google search engine. Since then, services have been restored one at a time. Google search and Gmail were resurrected around 11:20 am. while Google Drive and Gmail Chat only made their way back around 11:42 am. Panic was rampant on Twitter, as more and more people discovered they couldn’t log on, but it seems to be settling down now. So why was #GoogleDown? Well according to Digital Attack Map, ironically also a Google property, points to a possible DDoS attack on Google’s servers. A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is when a malicious group uses multiple systems to bombard a server with unnecessary traffic, in an attempt to make it crash. No credit taken by any hacker group and no comment yet from Google, as of this time. Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-google-reels-under-ddos-attack-2040211

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Google reels under DDoS attack

DDoS attack takes down X-Box Live, FBI warns businesses of new hacking threats

Cyber Monday appears to be a good time for cyber attacks. A group calling itself Lizard Squad said it has taken down Xbox Live. The outage started Monday night and has gamers complaining that they can’t access their systems. The group posted a message to Twitter Monday evening: Cyber Monday appears to be a good time for cyber attacks. A group calling itself Lizard Squad said it has taken down Xbox Live. The outage started Monday night and has gamers complaining that they can’t access their systems. The group posted a message to Twitter Monday evening: The group appears to have launched a DDOS (distributed denial-of-service attack), a fairly common way to take a site offline. Gaming sites said the Lizard Squad has been attacking gaming services for several months, including Play Station, Destiny and several EA games. The group made similar threats to bring the sites down at Christmas. Meanwhile, the FBI is warning businesses that hackers are using malicious software to launch a series of attacks on the U.S. Over the weekend, Sony Pictures Entertainment was hacked, resulting in five films, including the company’s new version of “Annie” being leaked online. The FBI sent out a confidential five-page memo to businesses Monday warning of the possibility of similar attacks, CNBC reported. The Sony attack is believed to have come from North Korea, which had threatened retribution for an upcoming film about its leader Kim John-un. North Korea has complainedthe film, “The Interview” – which includes a plot to assassinate the leader – was state-sponsored “terrorism.” North Korea has appealed to the United Nations to stop distribution of the film. The FBI is investigating the attack. Source: http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2014/12/ddos_attack_takes_down_x-box_l.html

Oh Oh Oh, Tis the season for DDoS attacks

It’s that time of the year where some websites become extremely high valued targets. It happens every year around this time, this year has proven to be no exception. DOSarrest have seen in the past where some online merchants were completely devastated by DDoS attacks that can sometimes force them out of business. These unlucky merchants were down due to attacks that lasted for several days and all of their customers had made their urgent Christmas purchases on other sites. These are lost sales that will never return and to make things worse, the online merchant gets stuck with excess inventory that they can’t sell. Why does this happen at this time of the year ? The answer is simple its most likely your competition. What better way to punish your competitor, then to shut their doors during the busiest shopping time of the year. The importance of DDoS protection can save your business. You can’t afford it ? Think of the alternative, being down for 24-48 hours sometime between November 27 to December 15th. Could your business survive this ? These are all questions to ask yourself. Approximately 30% of DOSarrests’ customers use the service as a back-up, should they experience a DDoS attack they use the service, when there is no attack they run directly off of their own server(s). Today one of their customers had an attack and contacted DOSarrest letting us know they needed help. Everything was already setup on DOSarrests’ side, fully customized and previously tested for them. Their 24/7 support team guided them through the steps to take and the customer was down for only 45 minutes. 45 minutes is a lot but it could of been 6 hours or longer if they didn’t have something already setup in advance. This particular customer already had a plan in place, he knew what he had to do and what not to do and was thrilled to not suffer some protracted outage. Some of the higher end online merchants will be ringing up $400,000/day in sales at this time of the year. Down or crippled for 6 hours would really hurt. Ask Santa for a DDoS protection plan this Holiday season, just in case the Grinch visits. Mark Teolis General Manager for DOSarrest Internet Security.

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Oh Oh Oh, Tis the season for DDoS attacks

Sony Pictures Entertainment Disabled by Cyber Attack

The company’s corporate networks and email were taken offline following the attack. Variety reports that all Sony Pictures Entertainment employees were advised on Monday, November 24, 2014, not to connect to corporate email or corporate networks following a breach by hackers calling themselves “Guardians of Peace,” or #GOP. Deadline.com reports that Sony Pictures’ computers were still down worldwide as of the following day, November 25, 2014. According to The Verge, company computers were defaced with a message stating, “Hacked By #GOP.” “Warning: We’ve already warned you, and this is just a beginning,” the message adds. “We continue till our request be met. We’ve obtained all your internal data including your secrets and top secrets. If you don’t obey us, we’ll release data shown below to the world.” Below the message was a list of five links to zip files allegedly containing stolen data. A Reddit post examining the zip files reports that they contain several files named “private key,” along with Excel files named “passwords” and PDF files named “Diaz, Cameron – Passport.pdf” and “Angelina Jolie passport.pdf.” Another poster found what appears to be weekly Excel files backups of a 1Password database. In an email sent to The Verge, a GOP hacker claimed they were assisted by insiders at Sony, stating, “Sony doesn’t lock their doors, physically, so we worked with other staff with similar interests to get in,” the hacker added. HyTrust vice president Michele Borovac told eSecurity Planet by email that this appears to be yet another example of a massive insider breach. “While it’s possible that the statements made by the attacker are just bluster, the reality is that privileged user credentials can give a hacker the keys to the kingdom,” she said. “Organizations must take steps to gain control and maintain visibility over these administrative ‘super user’ accounts if they want to prevent — or at least contain — these types of attacks,” Borovac added. A Courion survey recently found that IT managers are overconfident about their ability to prevent insider breaches, while a SpectorSoft survey found that 61 percent of IT professionals say they’re unable to deter insider threats. A recent eSecurity Planet article offered advice on how to defend against such threats. Incapsula security researcher Ofer Gayer told eSecurity Planet that the Sony attack is a hard blow for the company, particularly coming so soon after Sony’s networks were taken offline by a DDoS attack in August 2014. “As we’ve seen, these attacks can have a devastating effect on a company, its employees and its clients,” Gayer said. “Releasing private data (dubbed ‘d0xing’ in internet slang) or losing it all completely takes a dangerous step forward from plain old data theft, and as these types of attacks gain popularity, CISOs will be under heavier pressure to prevent them.” Source: http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/sony-pictures-entertainment-disabled-by-cyber-attack.html

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Sony Pictures Entertainment Disabled by Cyber Attack

Cleveland city website shutdown due to DDoS Attack

In retaliation for the police killing of a twelve-year-old boy in Cleveland and the fact that the names of the Police officers who shot him have not been released yet, the hacker group Anonymous claimed responsibility for shutting down the Cleveland city website early on Monday, reports VICE News. Anonymous is a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. Anonymous is made up of individuals who hack into computer systems without permission and take data such as communications records, names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit cards. The group has become known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites. The hacker group claimed responsibility for shutting down the Cleveland city website after the boy in Cleveland died due to injuries sustained in the police shooting. The boy was shot by police after he displayed a replica gun at a Cleveland recreation center. The Cleveland Police Department said in a statement that the child had not complied with orders to raise his hands. Instead, he apparently reached towards his waist band for the replica gun. The child had reportedly been pointing the toy weapon at members of the public outside the Cudell Recreation Center, prompting a 911 call, reports Reuters. The boy was taken to Metro Health Hospital for surgery on Saturday and remained in critical condition until his death early Sunday. The two officers involved in the incident were placed on administrative leave. One of them was treated at Fairview Hospital for an ankle injury, reports Reuters. According to a report on Cleveland.com that cited the deputy chief of police, Rice did not confront the officer verbally or physically. His father, Gregory Henderson, has questioned the use of lethal force saying, “Why not taze him? You shot him twice, not once, and at the end of the day you all don’t shoot for the legs, you shoot for the upper body,” as reported VICE News. The Department’s Use of Deadly Force Investigation Team is currently investigating the incident. Source: http://sputniknews.com/us/20141125/1015137543.html

DDoS attacks: Will Black Friday see upturn in web site attacks?

With Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the busiest online shopping season heading into full swing, it’s a favourite time for cybercriminals hoping to cash in on the holiday hoopla. “The amount of breaches and stolen identities went up drastically in October, November and December of last year,” said Alexander Rau, national information security strategist with Symantec Canada. “There’s more online shopping going on. People are crazy about Black Friday (Nov. 28, the day after the American Thanksgiving) and Cyber Monday, people want to get the best deal in the fastest time. “If there’s a lot of traffic, that’s where the attackers and the hackers go to try to steal information if they can.” It’s not only about stealing credit card credentials — that aspect of online chicanery, while still prevalent, is only a small part of cybercrime. On the consumer side, more important to criminals now is the ability to compile entire dossiers on their victims, so when the stolen credit card data is no longer usable they still have enough personal data to carry out sophisticated identity theft scams, which can include buying cars, taking out mortgages in their victims’ names and other fraud. Companies are under increasing attacks for all manner of gain. In the hectic shopping season, keeping transactions secure is only one part of the challenge. Distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks can take down websites by overloading them with bogus traffic. While DDoS attacks are common in games such as Minecraft, in which competitors use them to gain an edge, or in business or for political protest, unscrupulous website operators can also use them to take a retail competitor offline during the busiest online shopping days of the year. “A distributed denial of service attack basically means that someone, in that case the attacker, is flooding a service like a web server with just garbage traffic,” said Candid Wueest, a security researcher with Symantec Security Response and author of a recent report on the evolution of DDoS attacks. “You can compare it in real life to heavy rain, and your flood drains can’t cope with all the water coming in. Now someone opens the floodgates and sends a lot of water toward you. So you’re going to be underwater and not responding to any requests, even the one from the shopper that you actually want to.” Wueest said 2014 has seen an increase of 183 per cent of just one type of attack. “They are getting stronger but sometimes also shorter,” he said. “We know sometimes to take down an online service, often it’s enough to take it down for a few minutes or a few hours, and then the word will spread and people will start shopping at a different location. It’s not uncommon that we see it during seasons like the Black Friday shopping weekend.” In the lead up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Wueest said already some sites are being targeted by extortionists. In the digital world, protection money is demanded as the price of leaving a website online. “What they’ll do is inform the companies, the online shops, previous to the weekend, they’ll tell them, ‘Look, you’re either going to pay us $800 … and if you don’t do it we’re going to take down your business for a few hours.’ “In the end, it’s a classical extortion, which you obviously shouldn’t respond to but it’s hard because in the online world, it can damage your brand and obviously your sales if you’re not available during the peak hours.” Where is the computing power coming from to launch these attacks? If your computer is infected with a virus, it could be what is referred to as a bot, assembled into a botnet army under the command and control of the attacker. You don’t have to be a computer genius to launch an attack. Now for the price of a Starbucks eggnog latte you can get a website taken down for an hour. “There are services which offer it for as little as $5 for one hour, meaning you pay $5 through any online currency like bitcoin or something else and they will make sure that your competitor, your enemy for online gaming, or maybe a newspaper that you didn’t like is taken off for one hour, one day or even one week,” Wueest said. For consumers, there are other things to worry about besides whether or not their favourite online shopping site is available. Identity theft is becoming more and more sophisticated and data breaches — in which companies such as Target and many others have lost personal and financial information on their customers — can leave a ticking time bomb. Long after your credit card is cancelled and you’ve let the credit-monitoring service expire, the personal data about you could be assembled in new ways to make money. “There’s a number of things that people can do to protect themselves from a lot of these different kinds of scams that are going to take place during the holidays. They do every year. This year nobody expects it to be any different” said Bob Hansmann, director of product security for Websense, a computer security company. “Essentially you want to keep your eye out for deals that look too good to be true — they typically are. Any links inside an email or even some web pages — you’re going to want to be a little wary of it. “Make sure your anti-virus software is up to date. If you’re using a Windows machine, make sure it’s patched. Make sure you’re following the normal be-careful kinds of maintenance things, and that can eliminate a lot of these kinds of risks.” Source: http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2014/11/24/ddos-as-a-service-will-black-friday-see-upturn-in-web-site-attacks/

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DDoS attacks: Will Black Friday see upturn in web site attacks?