Tag Archives: ddos

“Armenpress” prevented Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ hacker attack

DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attack took place in order to thwart the works of “Armenpress” Armenian news agency website, which was prevented by IT specialists of the agency. Earlier Armenpress web site has been attacked. The agency learnt about the hacker attack on June 13 night and informed the enforcement bodies. Armenpress staff continues its work: the agency’s customers receive the news with its full volume. Thanks to the efforts of Armenpress IT specialists the security of agency has been intensified: currently works are carried out to determine the reasons of hacker attack. “Armenpress” expresses gratitude to its colleagues for the support and condemns any kind of hacker attack, qualifying it as a crime in all respects. Source: http://armenpress.am/eng/news/684393/%E2%80%9Carmenpress%E2%80%9D-prevented-ddos-hacker-attack.html

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“Armenpress” prevented Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ hacker attack

Azerbaijani and Turkish hackers hit Armenian websites with Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ attacks

Last night Azerbaijani hackers attacked BlogNews.am, Armenpress.am websites, and Turkish hackers attacked Beeline.am website. Information security specialist Samvel Martirosyan informed about this. Armenpress.am and Beeline.am websites aren’t functioning at present. According to the information circulated by BlogNews.am, a significant part of the information on the website was deleted because of the hackers’ actions. At this moment, the website’s administration is trying to recover the deleted information. Source: http://www.yerkirmedia.am/?act=news&lan=en&id=7791

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Azerbaijani and Turkish hackers hit Armenian websites with Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ attacks

Mascow protest against President Vladimir Putin led to indeptendent Russian websites hit with distributed denial-of-service ‘DDoS’ attack

More than 100,000 protesters on Tuesday joined a march against President Vladimir Putin in central Moscow, organizer and radical left-wing activist Sergei Udaltsov told AFP news agency. “There are more than 100,000 people,” Udaltsov said at the rally, called the March of Millions, which police said had drawn 18,000 people. City authorities allowed up to 50,000 to take part in Tuesday’s event, which coincides with the patriotic Russia Day holiday marking the country’s 1990 declaration of independence from Soviet rule. Moscow police said they were sending 12,000 riot officers and interior ministry troops onto the streets of the capital to keep order. The march will take protesters down Moscow’s Boulevard Ring toward Sakharov Avenue, scene of a dramatic demonstration last December against the outcome of disputed parliamentary elections that month. Meanwhile, independent Russian news websites went offline on Tuesday in a suspected attack by pro-government groups, as protesters gathered in Moscow for a march against President Vladimir Putin’s third Kremlin term. The site of the Moscow Echo radio station went down about a half hour before protesters started to gather on central Pushkin Square. The Dozhd (Rain) TV website and that of the prominent opposition Novaya Gazeta twice-weekly newspaper also could not be accessed as the event officially got under way at 0800 GMT. But the websites of Russia’s main media sources ? including Kremlin-allied papers and state-controlled television stations ? were all accessible and operating without delay. A Dozhd newscaster said their station’s website was the victim of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack of unknown origin. Opposition leaders have been previously blamed attacks on Russian independent media sources on pro-Putin youth groups. A similar attack, which included the inaccessibility of the same websites during the disputed December parliamentary election, was reported but no one claimed responsibility for that attack, AFP reported. The United States on Monday voiced concern after Russian police raided the homes of top protest leaders ahead of the planned mass rally in Moscow. “The United States is deeply concerned by the apparent harassment of Russian political opposition figures on the eve of the planned demonstrations on June 12,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. Police armed with assault rifles carried out a coordinated sweep of the homes of young Russian politicians, who analysts believe represent the biggest threat to ex-KGB spy Putin’s 12-year rule. Nuland also criticized a new law in Russia that imposes “disproportionate penalties” for violating rules on public demonstrations. Russian police were calling in opposition leaders for questioning one hour prior to the planned rally time on Tuesday in a move “clearly designed to take them off the streets during the demonstration,” she said. “Taken together, these measures raise serious questions about the arbitrary use of law enforcement to stifle free speech and free assembly,” she said. Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/06/12/220172.html

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Mascow protest against President Vladimir Putin led to indeptendent Russian websites hit with distributed denial-of-service ‘DDoS’ attack

Wawa’s website under suddle DDoS attack

Hackers caused problems for Wawa’s website, www.wawa.com, late Friday, although it appeared to be back to normal by Saturday. Some visitors to the convenience retailer’s site did not see the usual images of hoagies and smoothies and gasoline promotions. Instead, those images were replaced with a cartoon of Adolf Hitler and the name of the group claiming responsibility, UGNazi. According to a report by The Daily Times, Wawa.com visitors were met with a black screen reading “Welcome Nazis, Targets & Reasons” and the drawing of Hitler. Beneath the group’s name was a list of individuals who allegedly hacked the site: Arya Ebrahimi, Justin Martin, Alex Irvin and Thomas Ryan. The group included a link to follow it on Twitter. UGNazi tweeted about high gasoline prices and plans to also hack the convenience store’s gasoline pumps, reported CBS Philly. According to a Courier Post report, the group tweeted, “How much ?#havoc would be caused by shutting down all of the Wawa gas pumps? Love having access to the gas control relay centers .” In a statement provided to CSP Daily News on Saturday, Wawa public relations director Lori Bruce said, “Please be assured that we have no evidence to indicate our website has been breached. Images on our website were not replaced; however, a domain name server is being intermittently redirected to a nonlegitimate webpage. We have rectified the situation with our domain registrar, but it may take another 24 hours to propagate to all domain name servers. Until then, people trying to visit Wawa.com may see a page other than Wawa.com.” (The website seemed to be displaying normally by Saturday, with no trace of the bogus page evident.) “Unfortunately, today, many well-known brands have become targets for online mischief or worse. We will continue to actively monitor and report this to the proper authorities,” Bruce added. “This obviously had nothing to do with Wawa and it is certainly not something we condone,” she told the Courier-Post. “We will be working with authorities to get to the bottom of this.” Pennsylvania State Police told the paper that the hacking would fall under the purview of the Internet Crimes Task Force. “We did this not only for the fame but for the ‘lulz’ [“laugh out louds”] and the fact that Wawa has scorching high gas prices and receives many complaints daily,” Cosmo, one of the UGNazi hackers, told technology website Softpedia.com. He claimed that the group has gained access to the websites entire database, but that it has not found anything valuable to leak. According to Wikipedia, UGNazi, also known as the Underground Nazi Hacktivist Group, is a computer hacker group that has claimed responsibility for several attacks conducted over the Internet. It is best known for its “Tango Down” distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on U.S. government websites and for leaking the personal information of government officials. The Wawa, Pa.-based c-store chain operates 594 stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, of which 311 sell fuel. Source: http://www.cspnet.com/news/technology/articles/wawas-website-hacked

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Wawa’s website under suddle DDoS attack

Security fears for ACT’s govt files

The ACT government’s computer systems fought off more than a million attempts to compromise their security in the nine months to April, the territory’s auditor-general has found. And despite a ”denial of service” attack on a key government website just as the audit was coming to an end, auditor Maxine Cooper has found the territory’s information security system is ”robust”. But Dr Cooper’s report found 95 per cent of the 1025 information management systems in the government’s sprawling network were not complying with the requirement to have a security plan and even fewer had undertaken a threat-and-risk assessment. Advertisement: Story continues below Dr Cooper’s office audited the government’s computer network nine months before March, but as the audit period came to a close, the Justice and Community Safety Directorate’s website came under successful attack. The department, which holds sensitive information from the city’s justice agencies, was targeted by the Anonymous group in what is believed to be a case of mistaken identity. The hackers appeared to believe they were attacking the Australian ”justice department”, protesting the federal government’s attitude toward WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Dr Cooper warned that unauthorised accessing of information held by the government, including health and medical records, criminal records, case management records and sensitive government documents could cause strategic damage. But Dr Cooper found successful attacks were externally exceptional in an otherwise good security record for the territory but which could be improved if all government websites were internally hosted. ”The protection of the ACT government network is robust,” the Auditor-General said yesterday. ”Shared Services ICT Security Section’s security regime has successfully defended against over one million attempts to access the ACT government’s network in the nine-month period to 31 March, 2012. ”Future similar breaches could be minimised if all directorate and agency websites were hosted on the ACT government network ran ACT government endorsed supplier.” Dr Cooper also wants to see improvements, including more IT bureaucrats reading up on the essential documents governing security. ”While the administrative structures and processes that support whole and procedures are overall satisfactory there are some shortcomings,” Dr Cooper said. ”ICT security governance is based on the Protective Security Policy and Guidelines which is the ACT government’s pre-eminent protective security document. ”However it is unclear if the status of this document is well understood or if adequate processes exist to ensure that directorates and agencies are complying with it.” The auditor was also unhappy with a failure to put plans in place to secure information management systems in the government network ”Despite it being a requirement, only 5 per cent of the ACT government’s 1025 information management systems have a system security plan; and even fewer, some 2.24 per cent have a threat-and-risk assessment,” she said. Source: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/security-fears-for-acts-govt-files-20120608-201v5.html

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Security fears for ACT’s govt files

North Korea ships malware-infected games to South Korean users, uses them to launch DDoS attacks

According to an independent report published in Korea’s JoongAng Daily, Seoul’s Metropolitan Police Agency has intercepted a cyber attack plot orchestrated by North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, which successfully shipped malware-infected games to South Korean users which were later on used to launch a DDoS attack against the web site of Incheon Airport. More details: According to the police, the South Korean man, identified by the surname Jo, traveled to Shenyang, northeastern China, starting in September 2009 and met agents of an alleged North Korean trading company. He allegedly asked them to develop game software to be used in the South. Jo purchased dozens of computer game software for tens of millions of won, which was a third the cost of the same kind of software in the South. The games were infected with malignant viruses, of which Jo knew, an official at the police agency said. Jo sold the games to South Korean operators of online games. When people played the games, the viruses used their computers as zombies, through which the cyberattack was launched. This is the second attempt by North Korea in recent months to engage in electronic warfare with South Korea, following the use of GPS jammers causing difficulties in air and marine traffic controls. What’s particularly interesting about North Korea’s infection vector in this campaign, is that it’s not a novel approach to spread malware. Instead, it relies on a chain of trust, from the unknown origin of the produced games, to the sellers claims that they are malware-free, and ultimately targets bargain hunters. In the past, software piracy has proven to be a key driving force behind the growth of malware campaigns internationally. Distribution of malware-infected games greatly reminds me of a case which happened in Eastern Europe in the 90s where a malware coder participating in a popular IT magazine’s coding contest, on purposely backdoored his game, which ended being shipped to thousands of subscribers on a magazine-branded CD. Although a good example of a flawed QA (Quality Assurance) on behalf of the magazine, South Korean authorities claim that the person who purchased the games actually knew that they were infected with malware, hence the lower price for purchasing them. Just how big of a cyber threat is North Korea? It’s an emerging market player, having actively invested in the concept over the years, that’s for sure. In my recent conversation with cyber warfare expert Jeffrey Carr, he pointed out that he doubts Russia or China will knowingly supply the irrational North Korea with cyber warfare ‘know how’. However, Russia or China’s chain of command doesn’t need to know that this outsourcing will ever take place, as North Korea could easily outsource to sophisticated cybercriminals doing it for the money, not for the fame. Summary: Seoul’s Metropolitan Police Agency has intercepted a cyber attack plot orchestrated by North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, which successfully shipped malware-infected games to South Korean users. Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/north-korea-ships-malware-infected-games-to-south-korean-users-uses-them-to-launch-ddos-attacks/12383

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North Korea ships malware-infected games to South Korean users, uses them to launch DDoS attacks

Indian ISPs targeted in Anonymous censorship protest

The websites of Indian government-run communications company Mahanagar Telephone Nigam and the Internet Service Providers Association of India faced DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks from Anonymous on Wednesday as some Internet service providers continue to block file-sharing websites following a court order. ISPs are only following the orders of the court which are supreme, said Rajesh Chharia, president of ISPAI, who was doubtful that the association’s website had been affected by the hackers. The Indian arm of Anonymous previously attacked some government websites, and those of some political parties. Last month, users reported that the hackers tinkered with the service of a large ISP, Reliance Communications, redirecting its users from sites like Facebook and Twitter to a protest page. The hackers also claimed to have attacked the website and servers of Reliance, and got access to a large list of URLs blocked by the company. Reliance denied its servers were hacked. The attacks follow a March court order directing ISPs to prevent a newly released local movie from being available online in pirated versions. Some ISPs blocked some file-sharing sites altogether, rather than any offending URLs. The measures taken by the ISPs have differed depending on their interpretation of the order, Chharia said. Some websites such as The Pirate Bay continue to be blocked by some ISPs and carried the message, “This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications.” Pastebin is also not accessible through some ISPs. Internet service providers are against censorship, and also against piracy, Chharia said. “It is up to the government and various groups to come to a resolution,” he added. The responsibility of intermediaries has been a controversial issue in India, with some Internet companies including Google and Facebook sued in court late last year for objectionable content found on their sites. Their websites have been attacked as blocks on some file-sharing sites continue Anonymous meanwhile plans on June 9 what it describes as non-violent protests across many cities in India against censorship of the Internet in the country. It claims to have already received police permission for some of the protests. The scope of the protests has widened to include demands for changes in the India’s Information Technology Act, which among other things allows the government to block websites under certain conditions, and also allows the removal of online content by notice to ISPs. The government is also in the process of framing rules that will put curbs on freedom on social media, according to the hacker group. Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227804/Indian_ISPs_targeted_in_Anonymous_censorship_protest

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Indian ISPs targeted in Anonymous censorship protest

Counting the cost of a DDoS attack

In the past month, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the Leveson inquiry website, Visa and Virgin Media have all been hit by distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Much had been made of the motives for such attacks, and the methods that attackers use, but what impact do they have on the victim’s finances? John Pescatore, analyst at research firm Gartner, told Computing that there were three main costs associated with attacks. “There is the cost of the outage, as it means that a business’s customers cannot reach them through the internet. Then there is the cost of making the attack stop – and, often, a third cost in the form of a potential extortion fee,” he said. Obviously losses vary, depending on how much revenue is generated directly from a company’s web presence. John Roberts, head of managed services at MSP Redstone, said: “If a betting organisation trades £600m a year – or £2m a day in revenue terms – and 50 per cent of that comes from the web, then they are losing £1m a day.” Any web-dependent organisation within the global 1,000 might incur similar losses, he added. But there are some less obvious victims of these blunt-instrument attacks. “A Scottish football club who were playing in a European match had its website taken down by the opposing teams’ fans with a DDoS attack. The club was not able to generate significant revenue, because a number of its customers were signed up to stream live games on a monthly fee basis. So an organisation as innocuous as a football club can lose hundreds of thousands of pounds as well,” Roberts said. Public-sector bodies can also suffer substantial financial damage through loss of productivity. “There is a cost implication for local government as people will be looking to procure services over the internet. If those services are unavailable, public-sector staff will receive a lot more incoming phone calls,” he said. Other repercussions are harder to assess and quantify. For example, businesses can suffer reputational damage from DDoS attacks, said Andrew Kellett, analyst at research firm Ovum. “With [the attack on] the Serious Organised Crime Authority [SOCA], the issue was that this was not the first time it had been exposed to a DDoS attack. You would have thought that enough resilience would have been built after the first attack to deal with something similar a year later,” he said. But Gartner’s Pescatore said that reputational damage is often less severe than many organisations fear; customers are used to websites not working for any number of other reasons that are not related to DDoS attacks. “There is reputational damage if the website is defaced or if the website is attacked and customers’ financial information is disclosed, but DDoS generally does not have much of a reputational impact,” he argued. Kellett disagreed and emphasised that reputational damage can itself cause financial loss to enterprises, as their customers opt for an alternative service from a similar provider. He warned that DDoS attacks could also be used as cover for a simultaneous assault on the targeted business. “The noise around DDoS attacks can be used to hide another backdoor-style assault, such as data being stolen from within the organisation. “There is an example of clerical records, including credit card information, being stolen from an organisation when a DDoS attack was taking place. It was a hacktivist attack where the credit card details were used to make donations to a charity. For any organisation protecting those details it would be both embarrassing and expensive, as they could lose customers and have to repay anyone who has had money taken from their accounts,” he said. Pescatore said that, of the three costs typically associated with DDoS attacks, extortion attempts have reduced significantly. “In the last two years, businesses have not paid off extortion attempts and are focusing on putting in place services to mitigate DDoS attacks. Several years ago there were incidents where it was deemed less expensive to pay off the attackers as they would only be asking for €5,000,” he said. Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/analysis/2181680/analysis-counting-cost-ddos-attack

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Counting the cost of a DDoS attack

White House unveils initiatives to combat botnets

The Obama administration on Wednesday revealed new initiatives to combat botnets, believed to present one of the greatest threats to the integrity of the internet. Botnets are employed by cyber thieves to gain control of computers to perform illegal activities, including siphoning off assets, initiating denial of service (DoS) attacks, which could shut down a targeted website, or distributing spam. The initiatives stem from a voluntary public-private partnership between the White House Cybersecurity Office and the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security (DHS), which coordinate with private industry to lead the Industry Botnet Group (IBG), a group of nine trade associations and nonprofit organizations representing thousands of companies. “The issue of botnets is larger than any one industry or country,” said White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt at an event to announce the program (Schmidt recently announced his resignation). Also present at the event were Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology Patrick Gallagher, and a number of industry CEOs. According to an administration official who spoke with SCMagazineUS.com on Friday, “industry deserves credit for the real work in getting this done.” He said that the strategy goes back to a Commerce greenpaper on cyber security looking at areas where the government saw a solution in the private sector that could alleviate the botnet problem, but was not gaining traction and collective action. “Companies didn’t want to invest if other companies weren’t,” the administration official said. A call went out from the Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security to the private sector to find ways to build incentives for companies to implement best practices around botnets. “We were pleasantly surprised to find so much agreement,” the official said. A series of meetings at the White House followed, led by Schmidt, which led to the writing of IBG’s “Principles for Voluntary Efforts to Reduce the Impact of Botnets in Cyberspace,” he said. “Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility – the responsibility of government, our private sector partners and every computer user,” Napolitano said at Wednesday’s event, according to a release. “DHS has set out on a path to build a cyber system that supports secure and resilient infrastructure, encourages innovation, and protects openness, privacy and civil liberties.” The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) was also at the event to support the IBG’s principles. “We have a shared responsibility to commit resources to address the growing threats from botnets, which threaten to undermine the digital economy,” Craig Spiezle, executive director and president, Online Trust Alliance, said in a statement. “Preserving online trust and confidence needs to be a priority and the broad adoption of the Industry Botnet Group principles is an important step toward protecting the internet.” Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/white-house-unveils-initiatives-to-combat-botnets/article/243712/

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White House unveils initiatives to combat botnets

DoS crashes updated iPads, iPhones

A denial of service attack has been disclosed in the latest version of Apple iOS. The attack targets Safari in iOS 5.1.1 and a proof of concept was published online. Alienvault security researcher Alberto Ortega said the attack may also affect previous versions of the Apple operating system. The attack was successfully demonstrated on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Ortega said the error was a “step to achieve a real exploitation”. “iOS has a lot of mitigations to avoid successful exploitation,” Ortega said. “This software has errors and holes but you will need to bypass those hard mitigations and find more weaknesses to have something “usable’.” Ortega reported the error to Apple at the time of disclosure but had no response from the notoriously security silent company. “When JavaScript function match() gets a big buffer as parameter the browser unexpectedly crashes. By extension, the function search() is affected too,” Ortega said in the advisory. Source: http://www.crn.com.au/News/302620,dos-crashes-updated-ipads-iphones.aspx

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DoS crashes updated iPads, iPhones