Tag Archives: latest-news

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

View article:
DDoS attacks costly for online companies

DDoS Attacks: What They Are, and How to Defend Against Them

You may have heard of a DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack in the news as a method used by malicious hackers to attack a website. It’s possible you’ve even experienced the effects of a DDoS attack yourself. If you host a website or other online service, being aware of the dangers of a DDoS attack can help you prevent one, or mitigate the damage they can incur. Here’s a brief explanation of what a DDoS attack is, what it accomplishes and how to avoid one. How does a DDoS attack work? Denial of service through server flooding can be thought of as simply filling up a pipe with enough material to prevent anything else from getting through. Denial of service may occur unintentionally if a server receives more traffic than it was designed to handle. This happens frequently, such as when a low-trafficked website suddenly becomes popular. In this case, the server is still functioning, and is not damaged, but is unreachable from the Internet. It’s been effectively knocked offline, and will be until the DDoS attack either stops or is outgunned by more servers being brought online. Malicious denial of service involves deliberately flooding a server with traffic. The easiest way to do so is to distribute the attacking computers among hundreds, even thousands of computers, which simultaneously bombard the target server with (often useless) requests for information. Think of multiple pipes from various locations eventually connecting into one large pipe, and massive volumes of material eventually colliding from the origin points into the main pipe. While the electronic connections that make up the Internet are not technically “pipes,” there is a limit to the amount of data that can be transferred through any given network. Put enough in there, and a server’s pipes will be clogged. Cybercriminals use large systems of “zombie” computers, or computers infected with malware that allow a central controller to use them, in DDoS attacks. Hacktivist groups like Anonymous, on the other hand, recruit volunteers who install software on their own machines to take part in DDoS attacks. Anonymous has used DDoS attacks against the websites of credit-card companies, dictatorial foreign governments and even the CIA, FBI and U.S. Department of Justice. What does a DDoS attack accomplish? Unlike other forms of malicious computer activity, there is usually no immediate or direct gain for the attacker. The primary goal of a DDoS attack is simply to disrupt a service. A DDoS attack will not in itself allow hackers to access any secure information on its own. There is no network penetration or database breach involved. A DDoS attack can result in a loss of income for a company that does business online. Most of the large online retailers and social networks have hardened their servers to resist DDoS attacks. DDoS attacks by Anonymous and other hacktivist groups are often intended to be a form of protest. In January 2012, attacks on several government agencies and recording labels were staged by hacktivist groups as a form of protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the seizure of the file-sharing site MegaUpload by the FBI. Over the past decade, hundreds of DDos attacks have been performed by independent activists, political groups and even government agencies. How can you avoid or mitigate a DDoS attack? Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to avoid becoming the victim of a DDoS attack. Unlike other attacks, it is a brute-force strike that uses a public utility — the Internet itself — to overwhelm a system. Anti-virus software and filtering tools such as firewalls will not stop the effectiveness of the attack. The primary method of dealing with these attacks from the perspective of a host is to increase the capability of the system. Load-balancing tools can distribute requests among many servers scattered across a wide geographical area, and as the system grows to handle more requests, the attackers will need to use a stronger attack to overwhelm it. Methods to limit the amount of traffic allowed to and from the server can be enabled in some routers and switches, and some responsive systems can disconnect a network from the Internet before the attack brings the entire system down. The latter method will still result in the network being inaccessible from the Internet, but will generally result in a faster return to service. Source: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ddos-attack-definition,news-18079.html

Steam, Blizzard and EA hit by DDoS attacks

There’s something about the new year that gets hackers all excited as the DDoS attacks continue. The last major attack was on 31 December with DERP unleashing their DDoS on World of Tanks, EA, Blizzard, League of Legends and DOTA 2.It looks like the hangovers have worn off as once again they hit EA and Battlefield 4 servers. EA hopped on the case with a response. In what may have been a response to that, we have no idea what’s behind their thinking with all this, another group decided Steam should be the target. We are still seeing reports that Steam is still having issues despite the attack apparently having stopped. And then it was on to BattleNet… All this is being done for shits and giggles but really achieves nothing other than annoy gamers and cause some temporary headaches for server admins. The novelty will probably wear off in a few days but as the individuals involved are being encouraged by Twitter followers expect more outages. Source: http://www.incgamers.com/2014/01/steam-blizzard-ea-hit-ddos-attacks

Continue Reading:
Steam, Blizzard and EA hit by DDoS attacks

Attackers Wage Network Time Protocol-Based DDoS Attacks

Attackers have begun exploiting an oft-forgotten network protocol in a new spin on distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, as researchers spotted a spike in so-called NTP reflection attacks this month. The Network Time Protocol, or NTP, syncs time between machines on the network, and runs over port 123 UDP. It’s typically configured once by network administrators and often is not updated, according to Symantec, which discovered a major jump in attacks via the protocol over the past few weeks. “NTP is one of those set-it-and-forget-it protocols that is configured once and most network administrators don’t worry about it after that. Unfortunately, that means it is also not a service that is upgraded often, leaving it vulnerable to these reflection attacks,” says Allan Liska, a Symantec researcher in blog post last week. Attackers appear to be employing NTP for DDoSing similar to the way DNS is being abused in such attacks. They transmit small spoofed packets requesting a large amount of data sent to the DDoS target’s IP address. According to Symantec, it’s all about abusing the so-called “monlist” command in an older version of NTP. Monlist returns a list of the last 600 hosts that have connected to the server. “For attackers the monlist query is a great reconnaissance tool. For a localized NTP server it can help to build a network profile. However, as a DDoS tool, it is even better because a small query can redirect megabytes worth of traffic,” Liska explains in the post. Monlist modules can be found in NMAP as well as in Metasploit, for example. Metasploit includes monlist DDoS exploit module. The spike in NTP reflection attacks occurred mainly in mid-December, with close to 15,000 IPs affected, and dropped off significantly after December 23, according to Symantec’s data,. Symantec recommends that organizations update their NTP implementations to version 4.2.7, which does not use the monlist command. Another option is to disable access to monlist in older versions of NTP. “By disabling monlist, or upgrading so the command is no longer there, not only are you protecting your network from unwanted reconnaissance, but you are also protecting your network from inadvertently being used in a DDoS attack,” Liska says. Source: http://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/attackers-wage-network-time-protocol-bas/240165063

Read the article:
Attackers Wage Network Time Protocol-Based DDoS Attacks

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

Continue Reading:
NatWest hit by Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack

Lessons From 5 Advanced Attacks Of 2013

Distributed denial-of-service attacks targeted application and business-logic weaknesses to take down systems; fraudsters used encryption to scramble victims’ data until they paid a ransom; and, attackers increasingly targeted providers as a weak link in the chain of the digital security protecting businesses. In 2013, there were no major revolutions in the way that attackers compromised, cut off, or just plain inconvenienced their victim’s systems, but their techniques and tactics evolved. From more pernicious encryption in ransomware to massive DDoS attacked fueled by reflection, attackers showed that they still had options available in their bag of tricks. “As the criminals have become more savvy and more technically knowledgable and understand the victims’ environments better, they are able to see opportunities that they might otherwise overlook,” says Jeff Williams, director of security strategy for the counter threat unit at Dell SecureWorks, a managed security provider. Based on interviews with experts, here are five advanced attacks from 2013 and the lessons for businesses from those events. 1. Cryptolocker and the evolution of ransomware While many attackers create botnets to steal data or use victim’s machines as launching points for further attacks, a specialized group of attackers have used strong-arm tactics to extort money from victims. In the past, most of these types of attacks, referred to as ransomware, have been bluffs, but Cryptolocker, which started spreading in late summer, uses asymmetric encryption to lock important files. The group behind Cryptolocker has likely infected between 200,000 and 250,000 computers in the first hundred days, according to researchers at Dell SecureWorks. Based on the number of payments made using Bitcoin, the company conservatively estimated that 0.4 percent of victims paid the attackers, but it is likely many times more than minimum take of $240,000, the company stated in an analysis. “What sets it apart is not just the size and the professional ability of the people behind it, but that–unlike most ransomware, which is a bluff–this one actually destroys your files, and if you don’t pay them, you lose the data,” says Keith Jarvis, senior security researcher with Dell SecureWorks. Companies should expect ransomware to adopt the asymmetric-key encryption strategy employed by the Cryptolocker gang. 2. New York Times “hack” and supplier insecurity The August attack on The New York Times and other media outlets by the Syrian Electronic Army highlighted the vulnerability posed by service providers and technology suppliers. Rather than directly breach the New York Times’ systems, the attackers instead fooled the company’s domain registrar to transfer the ownership of the nytimes.com and other media firms’ domains to the SEA. The attack demonstrated the importance of working with any suppliers that could be a “critical cog” in a company’s security strategy, says Carl Herberger, vice president of security solutions for Radware, a network security firm. “You need to have real-time, critical knowledge from your service providers to determine whether they are being attacked and whether you are the intended victim of that attack,” says Herberger. 3. Bit9 and attacks on security providers In February, security firm Bit9 revealed that its systems had been breached to gain access to a digital code-signing certificate. By using such a certificate, attackers can create malware that would be considered “trusted” by Bit9?s systems. The attack, along with the breach of security company RSA, underscore that the firms whose job is to protect other companies are not immune to attack themselves. In addition, companies need to have additional layers of security and not rely on any one security vendor, says Vikram Thakur, a researcher with Symantec’s security response group. “The onus resides with the security firm to prevent successful attacks from happening, but when they fail, a victim should have a plan to bolster their defense,” Thakur says. 4. DDoS attacks get bigger, more subtle A number of denial-of-service attacks got digital ink this year. In March, anti-spam group Spamhaus suffered a massive denial-of-service attack, after it unilaterally blocked a number of online providers connected–in some cases tenuously–to spam. The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyberfighters continued their attacks on U.S. financial institutions, causing scattered outages during the year. As part of those attacks and other digital floods, attackers put a greater emphasis on using techniques designed to overwhelm applications. Such application-layer attacks doubled in frequency in the third quarter 2013, compared to the same quarter a year before, according to denial-of-service mitigation firm Prolexic. Reflection attacks, where attackers use incorrectly configured servers to amplify attacks, grew 265 percent in the same period, according to the firm. The attack against Spamhaus, which reportedly topped a collective 300 Gbps, used reflection attacks via open DNS resolvers to generate the massive flood of traffic. “This technique is still an available option for attackers,” says Radware’s Herberger. “Because there are 28 million vulnerable resolvers, and every resolver needs to be fixed, this problem is not going away any time soon.” 5. South Korea and destructive attacks Companies in both the Middle East and South Korea suffered destructive attacks designed to wipe data from computers. In 2012, Saudi Aramco and other companies in the Middle East were targeted with a malicious attack that erased data from machines, causing them to become unrecoverable. This year, South Korean firms were attacked in a similar manner in a multi-vector attack whose finale was the deletion of master boot records on infected computers. While such attacks have happened in the past, they seem to be more frequent, says Dell SecureWorks’ Williams. “The impact of these attacks have been pretty impressive–30,000 machines needed to be rebuilt in the Saudi Aramco case,” he says. Source: http://www.darkreading.com/advanced-threats/lessons-from-five-advanced-attacks-of-20/240165028

View the original here:
Lessons From 5 Advanced Attacks Of 2013

The Changing Trends of DDoS Attacks

Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks certainly aren’t new. I’ve been talking about them for years. However, they have been changing. The traditional style of attack, the flood-the-target type that crashes a website, is still going strong. But now we are seeing an increase in application-layer attacks that have the same goal: Systems go down, resources are unavailable and the victim is scrambling to fix everything. Recently, Vann Abernethy, senior product manager for NSFOCUS, talked to me about the changing DDoS landscape. Something he has noticed is how DDoS attacks are being used as smokescreens to cover up other criminal activity. He said: In fact, the FBI warned of one such attack type back in November of 2011, which relies upon the insertion of some form of malware. When the attacker is ready to activate the malware, a DDoS attack is launched to occupy defenders. In this case, the DDoS attack is really nothing more than a smokescreen used to confuse the defenses and allow the real attack to go unnoticed – at least initially. Considering that most malware goes undetected for long periods of time, even a small DDoS attack should be a huge red flag that something else may be going on. Abernethy adds that another trend he’s seeing is that the DDoS attack itself may be a bit more sinister. For example, a DDoS attack could be masking a simultaneous attack that is probing for vulnerabilities. He said: It’s like a recon team sent to look at an enemy’s position while they’re under some sort of long-range barrage. In general, basic probing will likely be caught if the victim has even modest security protections. But while under the duress of a DDoS attack, the very systems charged with either blocking or alerting suspicious activity might be under too much strain. Abernethy provides several solutions to protect against these emerging DDoS attack styles. One way is to have multiple teams set up to respond to DDoS attacks. One team would work on the DDoS attacks themselves; another team would be responsible for searching for other possible, hidden attacks. For the trend that involves probing, IT and security departments may want to deploy application security testing, and all applications used by the company should be subjected to the testing. DDoS attacks can be devastating to a company , interrupting vital customer interactions and ruining company reputations. The more we know about them, the better chance we have at protecting the company from any serious damage, if not preventing them altogether. Source: http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/data-security/the-changing-trends-of-ddos-attacks.html

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

View article:
7 Security Trends to Expect in 2014

DDoS attacks lead to 18 percent of data center outages

Maintaining top-of-the-line server performance is a delicate balancing act between power consumption, user accessibility and a variety of other factors both physical and abstract that can affect how well employees do their jobs or how quickly and effectively IT-related tasks are accomplished. Yet in many cases, even the most stringent attempts to keep the data center operating without issue can run afoul due to external forces. In the past, distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks were a small fraction of the reasons that businesses experienced outages in their IT infrastructure. However, recent findings from the Ponemon Institute reveal that they now account for 18 percent of these problems. This is up from only 2 percent in 2010, when Ponemon last studied the phenomenon. Data centers get caught in the cross-fire Often enough, these attacks are not even targeting data centers, 451 Research analyst Eric Hanselman told Network Computing. Rather, hackers are attempting to shut down the applications hosted in the IT infrastructure, and the servers become collateral damage in the process. Furthermore, due to the heightened sophistication of DDoS attacks, which are now both faster and more effective due to the amount of traffic that can be generated, these assaults are even harder to stop or recover from than ever. “It appears that these attacks are much more frequent and more difficult to contain than other root causes of data center outages,” Larry Ponemon, founder of the privacy and security think tank that bears his name, said in an email interview with Network Computing. Preventative measures begin with server monitoring Due to the problems associated with these attacks, decision-makers should try and stop them as early as possible. Noticing suspicious activity before it causes an outage can help immensely, but that requires businesses to implement server monitoring tools that can notice suspicious activity such as an uptick in traffic. “The most surprising factor was the lack of readiness or preparedness of companies,” Ponemon told Network Computing. “In general, we found several companies completely unprepared to deal with this type of outage event.” The high cost of a DDoS-based outage Those companies that fail to prevent or ready themselves for a DDoS-based outage may find themselves paying $822,000 on average to deal with the problem, second only to the average cost of outages caused by equipment failure ($959,000), according to Network Computing. This is more than double the expense of dealing with problems originating with human error, which typically only amount to $380,000. These costs relate to lost work time, reduced revenue and the repairs themselves, though overall business disruption amounts to 80 percent of the expenses. While an outage may not be quite as expensive to a smaller business, one could cause relatively similar amounts of damage, and all companies should be ready to quickly get back on their feet after these types of incidents. “The cost of unplanned downtime – whether it is the entire data center or one rack of servers – can be a huge unplanned cost for most organizations,” Ponemon told Network Computing. While Ponemon noted that businesses should expect a data center outage at some point, companies should still strive to minimize the possibility of a breach or attack. Putting in the proper safeguards and having a robust disaster recovery plan in place can reduce the amount of time that servers spend out of service. By implementing the right tools to notice and stop suspicious activity that may be the result of a DDoS attack, decision-makers may also potentially prevent about one-fifth of possible outage causes. Source: http://copperegg.com/ddos-attacks-lead-to-18-percent-of-data-center-outages/

See the article here:
DDoS attacks lead to 18 percent of data center outages

Companies still ignore DDoS attacks

Just days after NatWest Bank suffered a debilitating DDoS attack, a new survey has revealed that most businesses are still unprepared for this kind of threat. Some companies are unprepared for DDoS attacks Just days after NatWest Bank suffered a debilitating DDoS attack, a new survey has revealed that most businesses are still unprepared for this kind of threat. More than half the respondents to a survey by Corero lack adequate distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) defence technology. The study also reveals a lack of DDoS defence planning on multiple levels: nearly half of businesses have no formal DDoS response plan, 54 percent have outdated or non-existent network maps, and around one in three lack any clear idea of their normal network traffic volume. Furthermore, the survey slates businesses for under-investing in their security infrastructures, with around 40 percent of respondents still relying on firewalls, while nearly 60 percent do not test their DDoS defences regularly with network and application-layer tests. However, experts warn that DDos attacks are escalating and say that they can cause not only business disruption but also loss of IP, significant brand damage and a loss of customer confidence. Mike Loginov, CEO and CISO at independent security consultancy Ascot Barclay Group, told SCMagazineUK.com that figures from his firm and others show sharply rising numbers of successful DDoS attacks, adding: “These attacks are not necessarily undertaken by the perpetrator with financial gain in mind. However, they still leave the targeted business suffering costly damage repairs, loss of business and an undermining of the organisation’s capability to defend itself. Many attacks go unreported for fear of brand damage.” Andrew Miller, CFO and COO at Corero, which carried out the latest survey, agreed the threat is growing but stressed that companies are still not doing enough to protect themselves. “These denial-of-service-attacks (DDoS) are increasing and becoming more complex, but we’re still not seeing companies increasing their vigilance, investment and planning,” he told SCMagazineUK.com. “Across the board companies really need a combination of infrastructure investment, but more importantly putting in place plans to be able to detect what’s traversing companies’ networks.” Loginov agreed: “Generally speaking, IT departments, as the report suggests, are just not geared up to defend organisations against what cyber security professionals these days consider rudimentary attacks.” Miller said companies need “hybrid DDoS and cloud protection” but added that currently only “a small percentage” of companies have these defences in place. “What we’re seeing the more proactive customers doing is deploying a combination of both on-premises technology to provide 24/7 protection from denial of service attacks, as well as cloud protection services to deal with the high-volume ‘fill the pipe’ network-layer DDoS attacks – a combination of solutions rather than a single solution.” These warnings come just days after NatWest Bank was hit by a DDoS attack that left customers unable to access their accounts online. The 6 December attack disrupted NatWest’s website for about an hour and briefly hit the websites of the other banks in the RBS Group – RBS and Ulster Bank. The attack was focused on disruption rather than accessing account details. But Miller said organisations need to “understand it’s not just inconvenience, we’re talking about some loss of IPR. In the case of RBS, it’s obviously a significant issue from a brand and customer satisfaction perspective”. Miller added: “Denial of service attacks are often used as a smokescreen, a way of initially gaining entry into IT systems through a brute force-type attack, then following on from that the more sophisticated attacks which are aimed either at stealing customer information or intellectual property. We’re seeing banks in the US we’re talking to subject to these types of attacks on a daily basis.” In a statement to journalists, Jag Bains, CTO of DOSarrest Internet Security , said: “The transparency shown by RBS in admitting that they failed to invest properly in their IT systems is a common refrain amongst many enterprises, large and small. While each organisation may have multiple reasons for failing to invest, they all share the same notion that they won’t be a target until they get attacked. “With DDoS tools becoming more advanced and pervasive, all IT operations should work under the premise that they will be attacked and plan accordingly. Every stack and layer within their purview should be reviewed and they should identify cost-effective cloud solutions for their DDoS which provides much better performance and mitigation than expensive hardware.” The DDoS attacks on RBS came in the same week as an unrelated major IT failure, which hit the Group’s online and mobile banking, ATMs and debit card payments. As SCMagazineUK.com reported, RBS, NatWest and Ulster Bank customers were unable to use their cards to draw cash or pay for goods or services. RBS CEO Ross McEwan branded the outage as “unacceptable” and blamed decades of failure to invest adequately in new technology. Source: http://www.scmagazineuk.com/companies-still-ignore-ddos-attacks/article/324844/

View article:
Companies still ignore DDoS attacks