Tag Archives: denial of service

Education sector is fastest growing for DDoS mitigation

The education sector is the fastest growing segment in taking up distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, according to DDoS protection services firm DOSarrest. The firm’s CTO Jag Bains told Computing that many companies -not just e-commerce firms – are deploying DDoS protection. “If their website goes down as a result of an attack, they can lose their SEO ranking or it could have an effect on their brand, there is a lot at stake aside from revenues,” he said. And despite there not being a particular industry that looks at DDoS protection as a must, DOSarrest’s general manager, Mark Teolis claimed that the education sector is one area which has grown significantly. “Our fastest growing segment in the last six months is the education sector believe it or not,” he said. Teolis explained that the firm was getting business from “schools from the UK, the US and international universities” but said he couldn’t identify a specific reason as to why the sector has shown a sudden interest. Bains believes that it may be as a result of educational institutes guarding themselves against their own students. “Students have easy access to DDoS tools, so they may want to try it against their own [school or university]. They could be motivated because they’re failing in something, and there are enough smart kids around to access tools – it is easy to Google them anyway,” he said. But Teolis said that the tools have been available on the internet for a long time, so questioned why there was a sudden surge in interest from educational institutes. Bains suggested that it could be because the school and university websites have become an integral part of the education system. “We’ve been talking about e-commerce and gaming [as being key industries for DDoS protection], but web presence itself is very important and schools and universities need to make their websites accessible. They need a website to give out grades, information and schedules – five years ago they weren’t really using the web page apart from explaining where the school is located,” he said. But while the education sector may be taking a keen interest, Teolis claims that there is not one segment that is “taking up 30 per cent of the market”. He said that “10 or 15 per cent of the market is as good as it gets”. As for a particular industry that has not taken DDoS as seriously as others, Teolis believes many e-commerce firms haven’t contemplated being the victim of a DDoS attack. “There are still the odd e-commerce guys out there [who haven’t taken it as seriously]. Money is rolling in and they’re just focused on that; DDoS for them is somebody else’s problem. A lot of it is ‘my ISP will deal with it’, the fact of the matter is, it is difficult to stop all of the attacks,” he said. Source: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2325009/education-sector-is-fastest-growing-for-ddos-mitigation-dosarrest

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Education sector is fastest growing for DDoS mitigation

Could Cross-site scripting (XSS) be the chink in your website’s armour?

Sean Power, security operations manager for DOSarrest Internet Security , gives his advice on how businesses that rely heavily on their web presences can avoid (inadvertently) making their users susceptible to malicious attackers. Cross-site scripting, otherwise commonly known as XSS, is a popular attack vector and gets its fair share of the limelight in the press, but why is it such a problem and how is it caused? Essentially, XSS is a code vulnerability in a website that allows an attacker to inject malicious client-side scripts into a web page viewed by a visitor. When you visit a site that has been compromised by a XSS attack, you will be inadvertently executing the attacker’s program in addition to viewing the website. This code could be downloading malware, copying your personal information, or using your computer to perpetuate further attacks. Of course, most people don’t look at the scripting details on the website, but with popular wikis and web 2.0 content that is constantly updated and changed, it’s important to understand the ramifications from a security stand point. In order for modern websites to be interactive, they require a high degree of input from the user, this can be a place for attackers to inject content that will download malware to a visitor or enslave their computer, and therefore it is hard to monitor an ‘open’ area of the website and continually update and review their websites. XSS code can appear on the web page, in banner ads, even as part of the URL; and if it’s a site that is visited regularly, users will as good as submit themselves to the attacker.  In addition, as XSS is code that runs on the client side, it has access to anything that the JavaScript has access to on the browser, such as cookies that store information about browsing history. One of the real concerns about XSS is that by downloading script on a client-side computer, that endpoint can become enslaved into a botnet, or group of computers that have been infected with malware in order to allow a third party to control them, and used to participate in denial of service attacks. Users might not even be aware that they are part of an attack. In a recent case, we identified how a popular denial of service engine called ‘JSLOIC’ was used as script in a popular website, making any visitor an unwitting participant in a denial of service attack against a third party for as long as that browser window remained open. The range of what can be accomplished is huge- malware can be inserted into a legitimate website, turning it into a watering hole that can infect a visitor’s computer; and this can impact anyone. Once the XSS is put into a website, then the user becomes a victim and the attacker has is all of information that the browser has. In terms of preventing it; firstly, the hole in the website that has been exploited has to be closed.  The main tactic to prevent XSS code running on your website is to make sure you are ‘locking all the doors’ and reviewing your website code regularly to remove bugs and any vulnerabilities. If you are doing it properly, it should be a continual process. If a website has malware on it due to the owner not reviewing it regularly, then attackers will be able alter the malicious code to dominate the page and infect more visitors. You can limit the chances of getting malicious code on your website by routinely auditing the website for unintended JavaScript inclusions. But with XSS, especially non-persistent XSS, the best thing is to validate all data coming in, don’t include any supporting language and make sure what is coming in is sanitised, or checked for malicious code. This is especially true for parts of your website that get regular updates, like comment sections. It is not enough to just assume that because it clean before, new updates will also be also be clear. Even if you are following proper security coding and go through code reviews, websites are sometimes up for six months with no changes made, that is why vulnerability testing is important as new bugs come up. Remember, HTTP and HTML are full of potential vulnerabilities as the HTML protocol was written in the 1960s; it was never imagined it to be what it has become. So when writing website code, if you do not consider SQL Injection or XSS, then you will write a website full of holes. Top three tips: – Review your website and sanitise your code regularly to ensure there is no malicious code or holes where code can be inserted. – Consider not allowing comments to host external links, or even approve those links before they are published to prevent  code from being inserted easily. – View your web traffic in and out of your website for signs of unusual behaviour. Source: http://www.information-age.com/technology/security/123457575/could-xss-be-the-chink-in-your-website-s-armour-

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Could Cross-site scripting (XSS) be the chink in your website’s armour?

DDoS attacks costly for online companies

Distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks can be hugely damaging to companies that rely on their online presence for sales and new business, says DDoS mitigation provider, Prolexic. “All businesses are potentially vulnerable as there are no advance warnings of DDoS attacks, and no way to know if and when your business could be targeted,” says sales and innovation director at DRS, Jayson O’Reilly. “However, if your business is dependent on its Web site to service customers, you should have protocols in place to defend against an attack, should it happen.” O’Reilly states that some businesses are more vulnerable, or more likely to be a target, than others, which is largely industry dependent. Retail, financial services and gaming sites are popular targets. “Businesses should establish the likelihood of attack, or if they have already been a target, what sort of volume of attacks they have experienced. If they have experienced attacks, were these prolonged, or particularly strong? These questions can help a business select a suitable level of DDoS protection,” he says. He adds that businesses that find themselves regular targets, and which have a high dependency on their Web sites for business, should consider a level of protection that comes with high service level agreements. “They should select a DDoS mitigation provider that can have a site back up almost instantaneously, and guarantee uptime. However, this is not a cheap exercise.” There are other, less expensive, options too, according to O’Reilly, which come with a choice of protection levels, guaranteeing protection up to a certain level. “This sort of protection is suitable for businesses that experience low level, less lengthy attacks. However, should an attack happen that is above the protection level the company has paid for, they would be on their own,” O’Reilly says. He says smaller businesses which haven’t yet been hit by a DDoS attack can also follow several steps to better prepare themselves in the event of an attack, adding that companies which use dedicated servers have the option of setting up a backup connection, called an out-of-band (OOB) connection, which is essentially a backup path in case of network communication failure. “In the event of the usual network becoming inaccessible, the businesses can use the OOB connection to access the server instead. A hosting provider can add an OOB connection, and at a price that won’t break the bank.” O’Reilly says network monitoring can also be a big help. “A network monitoring system that can pick up anomalous behaviour, such as sudden spikes, can act as an early warning system for a DDoS attack.” Additionally, he advises companies to be aware of where they are most vulnerable, in order to keep an eye on those points, and strengthen them wherever possible. “Add alerts for your weak points, and put plans in place to upgrade the security on these points,” he concludes. Source: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69922:DDoS-attacks-costly-for-online-companies&catid=69

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DDoS attacks costly for online companies

NatWest hit by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack

NatWest has been hit by a ‘cyber attack’, leaving customers unable to access online accounts. The bank’s online banking service was disrupted after it was deliberately bombarded with internet traffic. Twitter users tweeted to say they could not access their bank accounts to pay bills or transfer money. @TomGilchrist wrote: “Do other banks computer systems/services go down as much as NatWest? I assume not. Time to move banks I think.” @AleexReid tweeted: “Just joined Santander. Fed up with NatWest. Another computer failure tonight. #welldone.” A NatWest spokesperson said: “Due to a surge in internet traffic deliberately directed at the NatWest website, some of our customers experienced difficulties accessing our customer web sites this evening. “This deliberate surge of traffic is commonly known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. “We have taken the appropriate action to restore the affected web sites. At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.” At the beginning of December  all of RBS and NatWest’s systems went down for three hours on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The group chief executive Ross McEwan described that glitch as “unacceptable” and added: “For decades, RBS failed to invest properly in its systems. “We need to put our customers’ needs at the centre of all we do. It will take time, but we are investing heavily in building IT systems our customers can rely on.” RBS and NatWest also came under fire in March after a “hardware fault” meant customers were unable to use their online accounts or withdraw cash for several hours. A major computer issue in June last year saw payments go awry, wages appear to go missing and home purchases and holidays interrupted for several weeks, costing the group £175m in compensation. This latest problem is the fourth time in 18 months RBS and NatWest customers have reported problems with the banks’ services. Source: http://news.sky.com/story/1187653/natwest-hit-by-fourth-online-banking-glitch

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NatWest hit by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack

7 Security Trends to Expect in 2014

Computer systems, in many peoples’ eyes, are there to be hacked — and that means fraudsters are always working on new ways to exploit vulnerabilities. So what does 2014 have in store? Here are seven security predictions for the New Year. DDoS Attacks Get Sneaky DDoS attackers will go from simple volumetric attacks to ones which take advantage of a site’s specific performance characteristics. That’s the prediction of security researchers at Neohapsis, a security and risk management consulting company. DDoS attacks that intelligently target bottlenecks in performance, such as pages with a high server load (like database writes) or specific network bottlenecks (like login and session management), can magnify the impact over attacks which are simply volume-based and request the homepage of a site. So it’s likely that we will begin to see the spread of tools which profile specific targets. The result? DDoS attacks that have more impact, and involve less network traffic, than the ones enterprises have become accustomed to mitigating against. Insider Threats Remain Major Security Problem According to a CyberSecurity Watch survey insiders were found to be the cause in 21 percent of security breaches, and a further 21 percent may have been due to the actions of insiders. More than half of respondents to another recent survey said it’s more difficult today to detect and prevent insider attacks than it was in 2011, and 53 percent were increasing their security budgets in response to insider threats. While a significant number of breaches are caused by malicious or disgruntled employees – or former employees – many are caused by well-meaning employees who are simply trying to do their job. BYOD programs and file sharing and collaboration services like Dropbox mean that it will be harder than ever to keep corporate data under corporate control in the face of these well-meaning but irresponsible employees. Defending against insider threats requires a multi-layered use of technological controls, including system-wide use of data encryption and establishment of policies stressing prevention of data loss. Security Worries Drive Cloud Consolidation Organizations will look to buy more solutions from a single vendor and demand greater integration between solutions to automate security, according to Eric Chiu, president of HyTrust, a cloud security company. The fact that securing cloud environments is very different from securing traditional physical environments will drive greater consolidation in the market, he says. Legacy Systems Cause More Security Headaches The spate of IT failures in banks and other high profile companies highlights a simple fact: Many of them are running legacy systems which are so old and out of date that they are becoming almost impossible to maintain. That’s because there are few people with the skills and expert knowledge that would be needed to run them securely – even if they were updated to eliminate know vulnerabilities, which they frequently are not. They often aren’t updated because no-one knows what impact that would have. It’s inevitable that we’ll see hackers going after such systems, exploiting vulnerabilities that can’t easily be fixed. Encryption Will Be Revisited In the wake of revelations about the NSA, many companies are realizing that encryption many be the only thing that is protecting their data, and it may not be as strong as they imagined. What’s more, if hackers are led to believe there is a weakness in a particular system – either accidental or intentional – they will pound on it until they find it. As a result, many companies will look to improve the way they use encryption. Look for particular attention to be paid to cryptographic block modes like CBC and OFB, and authenticated modes like EAX, CCM and GCM, advise the experts at Neohapsis. In addition to the encryption methods themselves, look for insights and innovations around key management and forward security. ‘Stuxnets’ Become More Common State-sponsored malware like Stuxnet – which is widely attributed to the United States, Israel or both – has proved to be far more sophisticated and effective than anything that a couple of hackers can develop. Expect more of this type of malware from the likes of China, Russia, Iran, India, Brazil and Pakistan. It’s probably already out there, even if it hasn’t yet been detected. 2014 could be the year that its prevalence becomes apparent. Bitcoin Drives New Malware The Bitcoin virtual currency is growing in popularity with legitimate businesses, and that’s likely to continue. That’s because Bitcoin payments offer significant attractions: They are quick and cheap, and there is no possibility of a chargeback. But Bitcoin wallets make attractive targets for criminals, because stolen coins can be cashed out instantly, without a middleman or launderer taking a cut. And many Bitcoin users are relatively unsophisticated, protecting their wallets with very little security. So expect Trojans and other malware that specifically look for and target Bitcoin stashes, as well as ransomware that demands Bitcoins in return for decrypting data. Source: http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/7-security-trends-to-expect-in-2014.html

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7 Security Trends to Expect in 2014

RBS hit by DDoS attack that takes down online services again

UK BANKING GROUP Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has been hit by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that took down its online services for the second time this week. Earlier this week, RBS irked customers when an IT systems failure shut down its websites and caused its customers’ bank cards to fail. On Friday it admitted that it has been struck by a DDoS attack affecting its online services once again. RBS took to Twitter to reveal news of the DDoS attack. It said, “Due to a surge in internet traffic directed at the Natwest website, customers experienced difficulties accessing some of our sites today. “This deliberate surge of traffic is known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. We have taken action to restore affected sites. “At no time was there any risk to customers. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.” RBS has yet to comment further, so it’s still unclear which websites were downed in the attack, although the tweet suggested that the RBS, Natwest and Ulster Bank websites were all affected. It is also still unclear who was responsible for the DDoS attack. However, it seems that the problems have not reached as far as those experienced by RBS customers earlier this week, when an IT systems failure struck the entire banking group. Speaking about the system failure on Monday evening, RBS CEO Ross McEwan said on Tuesday, “Last night’s systems failure was unacceptable. Yesterday was a busy shopping day and far too many of our customers were let down, unable to make purchases and withdraw cash. “For decades, RBS failed to invest properly in its systems. We need to put our customers’ needs at the centre of all we do. It will take time, but we are investing heavily in building IT systems our customers can rely on. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience we caused our customers. We know we have to do better. I will be outlining plans in the New Year for making RBS the bank that our customers and the UK need it to be. This will include an outline of where we intend to invest for the future.” Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2317692/rbs-hit-by-ddos-attack-that-takes-down-online-services-again

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RBS hit by DDoS attack that takes down online services again

Ukrainian Interior Ministry Website Reportedly Hit By DDoS Attack

The website Ukraine’s Interior Ministry is currently inaccessible, having apparently fallen foul of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack by hackers, local media said Sunday. Ukraine’s IT specialists claimed that they were behind the outage, which came after police violently dispersed a pro-EU rally in downtown Kiev Saturday, and promised to take down other Ukrainian government websites, pravda.com.ua reported. “Unfortunately, not each Ukrainian can come to Mykhailivska Square in Kiev or other local squares… That’s why I suggest an efficient way that everyone can show their protest in the Internet… I mean DDoS attack on the sites of our enemies in the government,” IT specialists said in a statement. The report said the Ukrainian government portal, www.kmu.gov.ua, also went out of service Sunday after suspected hacking. Some 35 people were injured after riot police cracked down on protesters camping out in the Independence Square in the capital Kiev Saturday, doctors said. Seven people still remain in hospital. A total of 35 people were briefly detained by police. Protesters regrouped Saturday near a monastery at Mykhailivska Square in downtown Kiev, which became the new place for continuing pro-EU rallies. Activists spent a night there and said they would form a national resistance task force to prepare a nationwide strike. Source: http://en.ria.ru/world/20131201/185186195/Ukrainian-Interior-Ministry-Website-Reportedly-Hit-By-Hackers.html

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Ukrainian Interior Ministry Website Reportedly Hit By DDoS Attack

NSA site down due to alleged DDoS attack

The website for the United States National Security Agency suddenly went offline Friday. NSA.gov has been unavailable globally as of late Friday afternoon, and Twitter accounts belonging to people loosely affiliated with the Anonymous hacktivism movement have suggested they are responsible. Twitter users @AnonymousOwn3r and @TruthIzSexy both were quick to comment on the matter, and implied that a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS, may have been waged as an act of protest against the NSA   Allegations that those users participated in the DDoS — a method of over-loading a website with too much traffic — are currently unverified, and @AnonymousOwn3r has previously taken credit for downing websites in a similar fashion, although those claims have been largely contested. The crippling of NSA.gov comes amid a series of damning national security documents that have been disclosed without authorization by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden. The revelations in the leaked documents have impassioned people around the globe outraged by evidence of widespread surveillance operated by the NSA, and a massive “Stop Watching Us” rally is scheduled for Saturday in Washington, DC. DDoS attacks are illegal in the United States under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, and two cases are currently underway in California and Virginia in which federal judges are weighing in on instances in which members of Anonymous allegedly used the technique to take down an array of sites during anti-copyright campaigns waged by the group in 2010 and 2011. In those cases, so-called hacktivsits are reported to have conspired together to send immense loads of traffic to targeted websites, rendering them inaccessible due to the overload.

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NSA site down due to alleged DDoS attack

DDoS Attacks Grow Shorter But Pack More Punch

If there was ever a riddle asking the listener to name something that has become bigger and shorter at the same time, distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) would be an acceptable answer. According to a new report from Arbor Networks about the third quarter of 2013, the average attack size now stands at 2.64 Gbps for the year, an increase of 78 percent from 2012. The number of attacks monitored by the firm that are more than 20 Gbps experienced massive growth, to the tune of a 350 percent increase so far this year. Meanwhile, the length of the vast majority of attacks (87 percent) has gone down to less than an hour. “Shorter duration attacks are not inherently harder to detect, but they can be harder to mitigate,” says Gary Sockrider, solutions architect for the Americas, Arbor Networks. “Many organizations today rely on network- or cloud-based mitigation of DDoS attacks. Because they rely on rerouting attack traffic to scrubbing centers, there is a small delay in mitigation while routing or domain name changes propagate. “Ideally you want to have mitigation capabilities on your own network that can react immediately without the need for redirection. I think it’s safe to say that if you have absolutely no mitigation capabilities, then shorter attacks are better. However, if your only protection has inherent delays, then shorter attacks potentially cannot be stopped.” Barrett Lyon, founder of DDoS mitigation firm Prolexic Technologies and now CTO of Defense.net, says that shorter DDoS attacks also have the added benefit of minimizing an attacker’s exposure. “The longer it runs, the more things are obviously clogged up and the more reactive network engineers become,” he observes. “When network engineers start researching a problem like that — congestion in their network or why is this computer slow — it exposes the botnet and makes it much vulnerable than it would be otherwise. So if it’s a short attack but big, [attackers] can kind of quickly see and size up their target. They can quickly determine … what’s the best bang for the buck when it comes to attacking.” A clear trend of increasing attack sizes has emerged during the past several years, Sockrider says. “I believe there [is] a combination of factors enabling this trend,” he says. “First, there is increased availability of simple-to-use tools for carrying out attacks with little skill or knowledge. Second, there is a growing proliferation of DDoS-for-hire services that are quite inexpensive. Third, increasingly powerful workstations and servers that get compromised also have significantly faster connections to the Internet from which to generate attacks.” The largest monitored and verified attack size during the quarter was 191 Gbps, according to the firm. Fifty-four percent of attacks this year are more than 1 Gbps, up from 33 percent in 2012. Some 37 percent so far this year are between 2 Gbps and 10 Gbps. Another general trend is of attacks moving to the application layer. In fact, while volumetric attacks are still common, they are now frequently combined with application-layer and state exhaustion attacks, Sockrider says. In some cases, DDoS attacks have served as diversions meant to draw attention from other activities, such as bank fraud. For example, a report published in April by Dell SecureWorks noted how DDoS attacks were launched after fraudulent wire and automatic clearing house (ACH) transfers. “Most people that follow DDoS trends are aware of the really high-profile attacks against government and financial institutions, but in reality the most common targets are actually business and e-commerce sites,” Sockrider says. “We’re also seeing increased attacks in the online gaming industry, where attacks are waged for competitive advantage. Additionally, some organizations are taking collateral damage because they reside in a data center, and they happen to share infrastructure with a high-profile target. The bottom line is that in the current environment, every organization is a potential target.” Source: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/ddos-attacks-grow-shorter-but-pack-more/240162741

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DDoS Attacks Grow Shorter But Pack More Punch

US charges 13 Anonymous members for DDoS attacks

The U.S. has brought criminal charges against 13 persons, said to be members of the hacker group Anonymous, for their alleged participation in cyberattacks as part of a campaign called Operation Payback.The defendants and other members of Anonymous allegedly launched or attempted to launch cyberattacks against government entities, trade associations, individuals, law firms and financial institutions, according to a federal grand jury indictment released Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria division. Among the organizations targeted were the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, the United States Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, Visa, MasterCard, and Bank of America. The method of attack was DDoS (distributed denial of service) which floods web sites with spurious Internet traffic so that they become unavailable, and the weapon of choice was the freely-available and downloadable network stress testing program known as the Low Orbit Ion Cannon or LOIC, according to the indictment. The 13 persons have been charged with one count of “conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer” from about Sept. 16, 2010 to at least Jan. 2, 2011. All are from the U.S. and in their 20s with the exception of Geoffrey Kenneth Commander, a 65-year-old man from Hancock, New Hampshire, and Dennis Owen Collins, a man from Toledo, Ohio born in 1960. Members of Anonymous launched Operation Payback on about September 2010 to retaliate against the discontinuation of The Pirate Bay, a controversial file-sharing website in Sweden, according to the indictment. On December 4, 2010, Operation Payback planned DDoS attacks on the websites of entities that were either critical of whistle-blower website WikiLeaks or had refused to process payments for WikiLeaks, including Amazon and U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman. The hacker group thereafter launched attacks on the website of PostFinance, a Swiss payments, e-finance, and electronic account management organization, the Swedish prosecutor’s office and a Swedish law firm. This was followed by an attack on the website of MasterCard, which cost the payment firm at least US$5,000 in losses during a one-year period, according to the indictment. Anonymous has attacked sites in the U.S. and abroad for a number of ideological reasons ranging from censorship of the Internet, the takedown of file-sharing site Megaupload, and Israel military action against Hamas. Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052360/us-indicts-13-anonymous-members-for-ddos-attacks.html

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US charges 13 Anonymous members for DDoS attacks