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12 year old Quebec boy Anonymous Hacker Pleads Guilty to DDOS Attack on Government Websites

A 12-year-old Quebec boy is responsible for hacking several government and police websites during the student uprising in spring 2012, creating computer havoc and causing $60,000 damage, court heard Thursday. Some sites were out of service for up to two days and the boy did it in the name of the activist/hacktivist group Anonymous. The Grade 5 student from the Montreal suburb of Notre-Dame- de-Grâce, whose actions were not politically motivated, traded pirated information to Anonymous for video games, court was told. The boy appeared in youth court Thursday dressed in his school uniform and accompanied by his father. He pleaded guilty to three charges related to the hacking of the websites, including those of Montreal police, the Quebec Institute of Public Health, Chilean government and some non-public sites. Police estimate damage to the sites at $60,000 but a more detailed report will be produced in court when the boy is sentenced next month. The little hacker, whose name can’t be published and is said to have been involved with computers since the age of nine, contributed to the crash of some sites and accessed information belonging to users and administrators. He had even issued a warning to others: “It’s easy to hack but do not go there too much, they will track you down.” Court heard the boy used three different computer attacks, one which resulted in a denial of service to those trying to access the websites and flooded servers, making them ineffective. In another method he would alter information and make it appear as the homepage. His third tactic involved exploiting security holes in order to access database servers. “And he told others how to do it,” a police expert testified in Montreal on Thursday. While others were arrested in the scheme, it was the boy who opened the door to the website attacks, court heard. “He saw it as a challenge, he was only 12 years old,” his lawyer said. “There was no political purpose.” In 2000, a 15-year-old Montreal boy, know as Mafiaboy, did an estimated $1.7 billion in damage through hacking. He was sentenced to eight months in youth detention and subsequently received several job offers in cybersecurity. Source: http://www.torontosun.com/2013/10/25/que-boy-12-pleads-guilty-to-hacking-government-websites

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

Preparing for DDoS attacks

Not everyone despaired over the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that hit some of the Web’s biggest e-commerce sites in February. Security consultants and developers of security tools seized the opportunity to spotlight their solutions. Simple DoS attacks are not new. During one, a hacker floods a system with packets of useless requests, making the system so busy it denies access to legitimate users. What’s new are the hacker tools that enable DDoS attacks, in which a hacker uses dozens or hundreds of machines to worsen the attack. The hacker uses client software on one PC to install ‘zombie’ or ‘back door’ programs on other servers, which then flood a target system with useless packets. Zombie programs, including TFN (Tribal Flood Network), Trin00, TFN2K (Tribal Flood Network 2K) and Stacheldraht (Barbed Wire), arrived last fall destined for Solaris, Linux and Windows NT servers. Until recently, most security packages designed to thwart such attacks were aimed at the Unix environment. Now, however, hundreds of programs are being designed for Windows NT, ranging from Internet Security Systems’ (ISS) award-winning SAFEsuite software to BindView Corp.’s free and downloadable Zombie Zapper. Some programs scan the addresses of outgoing messages, intercepting wayward messages before they swamp a potential victim. Others allow administrators to block fake messages from entering a system, or stop the echo functions that help create the constant data flood in a DoS attack. While the programs for NT are good news, the task of evaluating them can easily overwhelm an IS staff, according to Aberdeen Group, a consultancy in Boston. Adding pressure are unresolved issues of liability when one’s computers have been compromised because of lax security. To organize efforts and provide a modicum of legal defense, leading security practitioners suggest these guidelines: Perform a security audit or risk assessment of critical systems using system- and network-based vulnerability tools. Identify and empower an Incident Response Team. Establish an Emergency Response and Escalation Plan. Install Intrusion Detection and Response systems. Examine legal liability exposure. If systems are under attack: Alert your Incident Response Team. Contact your ISP; often, hosts can shut down your access line, stopping the attack. Notify CERT/CC. Notify law enforcement authorities at the FBI and the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC). Monitor systems during the attack using network and host-based intrusion detection systems. Enable detailed firewall logging. Collect forensics to prosecute hackers later. Source: http://networksasia.net/article/preparing-ddos-attacks-960134400

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Preparing for DDoS attacks

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

GitHub Struggles With Second Day Of DDoS Attacks

Code sharing site GitHub has been fending off large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks for two days now, with the site repeatedly taken offline. The attacks started at around 8pm yesterday, when a “large scale DDoS attack” hit. It didn’t last long as GitHub was back online less than an hour later. GitHub downed by DDoSers again But today problems emerged again. From 10.30am, another DDoS has taken GitHub down. “We’re doing everything we can to restore normal service as soon as possible,” a GitHub spokesperson told TechWeekEurope . GitHub has been keeping users updated on its status page. “We’re simultaneously working on deflecting the attack and restoring affected services,” read a post at 11.17am. “We’re working to re-establish connectivity after the attack disrupted our primary internet transit links,” another post from 11.48am read. The site was functioning at 12pm today, but there was no update on the status page. The site has been battered by DDoS attacks throughout this year. In August, a “very large” strike was reported and it was hit twice in two days in March. Source: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/github-ddos-attacks-128704

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GitHub Struggles With Second Day Of DDoS Attacks

WordPress Site Hacks Continue

WordPress installations sporting known vulnerabilities continue to be compromised by hackers and turned into distributed denial of service (DDoS) launch pads. That warning was sounded last week after IT professional Steven Veldkamp shared an intrusion prevention system (IPS) log with Hacker News , which found that a single 26-second DDoS attack against a site run by Veldkamp was launched from 569 different WordPress blogs. Those blogs appear to have been compromised by attackers, since they comprised everything from a “mercury science and policy” blog at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (which as of press time remained offline) and a National Endowment for the Arts blog to WordPress sites run by Pennsylvania State University and Stevens Institute of Technology. “The key aspect to note here is the number of compromised WordPress servers,” said Stephen Gates, chief security evangelist at DDoS defense firm Corero Network Security, via email. “It’s a simple mathematical equation — attackers are looking to infect servers sitting in hosting environments with each server easily capable of generating 1 Gbps of attack traffic. It is quite easy to generate extremely high volumes and varieties of attack traffic by compromising just a few WordPress servers.” Once WordPress servers get compromised, attackers can use them for a variety of purposes, such as attacking U.S. financial institutions. “From volumetric attacks that melt down firewalls to the ‘low and slow attacks’ that sneak through firewalls undetected — the list is really endless,” Gates said. WordPress blogs, of course, are easy to provision and host. But that ease of installation — and use — means that such software is often run outside the purview of IT provisioning and oversight. Furthermore, many WordPress administrators fail to keep their software updated or follow security best practices, such as choosing unique usernames and strong passwords for WordPress admin accounts. As a result, numerous WordPress sites sporting known vulnerabilities — or “admin” as the admin account name — remain sitting ducks for automated attacks. Indeed, malware is often used to automatically find and exploit vulnerable WordPress installations. In August, Matthew Bing, an Arbor Security Engineering & Response Team (ASERT) research analyst, noted that the Fort Disco malware — first discovered in April 2013 — was being used to target known vulnerabilities in content management systems, backed by six command-and-control servers that were running a botnet comprised of more than 25,000 Windows PCs. “To date, over 6,000 Joomla, WordPress and Datalife Engine installations have been the victims of password guessing,” he said in a blog post. How widespread is the problem of exploitable WordPress software? According to a study conducted by EnableSecurity CEO Sandro Gauci, the list of the one million most trafficked websites — per the Alexa index — includes 40,000 WordPress sites. But 70% of those sites are running a version of WordPress with known vulnerabilities. Those statistics were relayed last week by WordPress security expert Robert Abela, who studied data that EnableSecurity’s Gauci compiled over a four-day period in the middle of September, immediately following the September 11 release of WordPress 3.6.1, which remains the latest version. In a blog post, Abela reported that of the 42,106 WordPress sites from the Alexa index identified, 19% had already been updated to the new version, while 31% of sites were still running the previous version (3.6). But the remaining 51% of cataloged WordPress sites ran one of 72 other versions, with 2% of all cataloged sites still running version 2.x, which dates from 2007 and earlier. Needless to say, many historical WordPress updates have included patches for exploitable vulnerabilities. For example, the latest version of WordPress — 3.6.1 — patched a known vulnerability in version 3.6 that would have allowed an attacker to remotely execute code. Previous versions of WordPress have also sported a number of known bugs, including version 3.5.1 (8 vulnerabilities), 3.4.2 (12 vulnerabilities) and 3.3.1 (24 vulnerabilities). All of this adds up to numerous WordPress sites that can be relatively easily hacked, based on a review of the top 10 most-seen versions of WordPress seen among the more than 40,000 counted by Gauci. “At least 30,823 WordPress websites out of 42,106 are vulnerable to exploitable vulnerabilities,” said Abela. “This means that 73.2% of the most popular WordPress installations are vulnerable to vulnerabilities which can be detected using free automated tools. Considering the number of vulnerable WordPress installations out there, and the popularity of such websites, we are still surprised … most of them haven’t been hacked yet.” Source: http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/wordpress-site-hacks-continue/240162060

The latest on major DDoS and phishing attacks, and more

An analyst has confirmed that several, unnamed financial institutions have suffered losses in the “millions” owing to distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. According to Avivah Litan , VP and distinguished analyst at research firm Gartner , three U.S. banks were hit by short-lived DDoS attacks in recent months after fraudsters targeted a wire payment switch, a central wire system at banks, to transfer funds. » A phishing attack enabled hackers to modify the DNS records for several domains of media sites, including those run by The New York Times , Twitter and the Huffington Post U.K. Investigations revealed that the companies were not even the ones targeted by the attackers, who claimed to be the Syrian Electronic Army , a band of pro-Assad hacktivists responsible for a number of IT takedowns in recent months. In order to commandeer the major media sites, intruders compromised a reseller account that had access to the IT systems of Melbourne IT , an Australian registrar, and targeted an employee using an emailed spear phishing ruse. » The PCI Security Standards Council gave merchants a first look at changes to its credit card data and payment application security guidelines that could be introduced later this year. In mid-August, the council released the “3.0 Change Highlights” document, a preview to the updated PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA DSS), which are set to be published Nov. 7. Expected changes in version 3.0 include a new requirement that merchants draw up a current diagram showing how cardholder data flows through organizations’ systems, and added guidance on protecting point-of-sale (POS) terminals from attacks, as well as educational explanations of why the 12 core security requirements have been included in the standard. » Saboteurs have introduced a rare breed of banking trojan capable of infecting Linux users. The malware, called Hand of Thief, is being sold on Russian underground forums and will soon offer a “full-blown” suite of malicious features, making it comparable to other major, commercially available financial malware, RSA researchers discovered. Hand of Thief’s price tag could reach $3,000 once criminals add a suite of web injections to its existing form grabber and backdoor infection vectors. » Around 14,000 former and present employees at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) had their personally identifiable information (PII) accessed by an unauthorized party who gained access to the agency’s network. The breach, which may have happened in late July, did not impact classified data, the DOE revealed. But, the incident could mean that sensitive data linkable to an individual was exposed. » In late August, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a preliminary draft framework in support of President Obama ‘s executive order, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity.” Earlier in August, NIST also released revisions to two of its security-related manuals, the first amendments since NIST released them in 2005, reflecting evolving malware threats and the trend of organizations using automated patch management. » Errata : Our apologies to Steve Lee , who we quoted in an insider threats story in August, for erroneously placing the office of his company, Steve Lee and Associates, in Texas, rather than Los Angeles. Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/news-briefs-the-latest-on-major-ddos-and-phishing-attacks-and-more/article/311635/

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The latest on major DDoS and phishing attacks, and more

Schoolboy arrested over Spamhaus DDoS, world’s biggest cyber attack

In March 2013, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack of unprecedented ferocity was launched against the servers of Spamhaus, an international non-profit dedicated to battling spam. A DDoS is an attack wherein the servers of a targeted online service are slowed to a crawl with loads of pointless email or file uploads that clog up their processing ability. The March Spamhaus attack peaked at 300 gigabits per second, Spamhaus CEO Steve Linford told the BBC at the time – the largest ever recorded, with enough force to cause worldwide disruption of the internet. In April, one suspect was arrested in Spain. Now, it’s come to light, another suspect was also secretly arrested in April – this one being a London schoolboy. The 16-year-old was arrested as part of an international dragnet against a suspected organised crime gang, reports the London Evening Standard. Detectives from the National Cyber Crime Unit detained the unnamed teenager at his home in southwest London. The newspaper quotes a briefing document on the British investigation, codenamed Operation Rashlike, about the arrest: The suspect was found with his computer systems open and logged on to various virtual systems and forums. The subject has a significant amount of money flowing through his bank account. Financial investigators are in the process of restraining monies. Officers seized his computers and mobile devices. The boy’s arrest, by detectives from the National Cyber Crime Unit, followed an international police operation against those suspected of carrying out the massive cyber attack, which slowed down the internet worldwide. The briefing document says that the DDoS affected services that included the London Internet Exchange. The boy has been released on bail until later this year, the London Evening Standard reports. The arrest follows close on the heels of two other London-based arrests resulting from international cyber-policing: Last week’s arrest of eight men in connection with a £1.3 million ($2.08 million) bank heist carried out with a remote-control device they had the brass to plug into a Barclays branch computer, and The arrest of 12 men in connection with a scheme to boobytrap computers at Santander, one of the UK’s largest banks, by rigging the same type of remote-control device found in Barclays – devices that enable remote bank robbery. Truly, the UK isn’t fooling around when it comes to cybercrime – a fact it’s making clear with the robust work of the National Cyber Crime Unit, which itself will soon be rolled into the even more cybercrime-comprehensive arms of the National Crime Agency. The National Crime Agency, due to launch 7 October, is going to comprise a number of distinct divisions: Organised Crime, Border Policing, Economic Crime, and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, on top of also housing the National Cyber Crime Unit. If the recent arrests are any indication, it would seem that the UK’s on the right track with cyber crime. May cyber crooks, both the seasoned and the schoolboys, take heed. Source: http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/09/27/schoolboy-arrested-over-spamhaus-ddos-worlds-biggest-cyber-attack/

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Schoolboy arrested over Spamhaus DDoS, world’s biggest cyber attack

Threat of the Week: Sept. 11 Quiet But DDoS On The Rise (Again)

September 11 came, it went and despite the FBI warning to credit unions to be ready for a bump in hostile activities on that anniversary date, multiple experts said they saw absolutely no traffic increase. But they also had worrisome news: There has been a sharp rise in low-grade Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks aimed at financial institutions, often in association with attempted fraud, but sometimes apparently simply an angry act by a rejected loan applicant or a terminated employee. First, the 9/11 news: “Nothing unusual happened on September 11. The reason there is nothing to report is that the volume is the same as the day before,” said Ashley Stephenson, CEO of Corero, a Hudson, Mass.-based DDoS mitigation firm. “Every day there are attacks.” Chris Novak of the Verizon Risk Team said likewise: “We saw no spike in activity on 9/11.” Rich Bolstridge, a DDoS expert with Cambridge, Mass-based network traffic firm Akamai, made it three: “We saw no increase in activity on September 11. We had expected to see activity. But it was very quiet.” The big DDoS guns fired by al Qassam and other actors usually said to be connected to nation states in the Middle East may not have been out on 9/11, but the bad news is the jump in low-grade attacks that may be small compared to the giant attacks unleashed by al Qassam are plenty large enough to knock an unprepared credit union off line and, said the experts, most credit unions remain unprepared to adequately deflect DDoS assaults of just about any magnitude. “We are surprised how naive CUs are about DDoS,” said Kirk Drake, CEO of Hagerstown, Md.-based CUSO Ongoing Operations. “They don’t realize how easy it has become for just about anyone to aim DDoS at a target.” That is the rub, Terrence Gareau, principal research scientist for DDoS mitigation firm Prolexic in Hollywood, Fla., explained: “There is a very low barrier to entry for DDoS. We are talking $5 that will buy you 600 seconds of DDoS.” That may only be 10 minutes, but the plunger who can come up with $50 could put a credit union down for an afternoon. A chilling factoid via a report from Santa Clara, Calif.-based NSFOCUS, a DDoS mitigation firm: “Based on traffic analysis, there are 1.29 DDoS attacks occurring worldwide every two minutes, on average.” The company added, “Most attacks are short and small. The report found that 93.2% of DDoS attacks were less than 30 minutes in duration and 80.1% did not surpass a traffic rate of 50 Mbps.” By contrast, the data throughput in al Qassam attacks has sometimes exceeded 45 Gbps, meaning it is vastly larger. Van Abernethy, an NSFOCUS spokesperson, elaborated, “The main news – the press focuses on the big DDoS – but the reality is that unreported DDoS goes on all the time. There are a lot of small attacks.” And then it gets worse still: “Small attacks are often accompanied by data exfiltration attempts, especially at financial institutions,” said Abernethy. Verizon’s Novak agreed: “We are seeing where DDoS is used to distract a medium-size financial institution. While they are busy fighting off the DDoS. they don’t see that terabytes of data just walked out the door. That’s scary.” A similar warning was issued a few weeks ago by respected Gartner analyst Avivah Litan who said she knew of three instances where DDoS was used to distract financial institution security as fraud was committed. She declined to offer specific details. At CUNA Mutual, risk expert Ken Otsuka said that in the past year one loss associated with a DDoS attack had been filed. He also offered no specifics. Add it up, however, and the situation is grim. DDoS as a service – available for hire by those with a grudge or with criminal intent – is increasingly available, it is cheap, and at least some providers happily accept Bitcoin, the virtual currency with some anonymity built in. Importantly, just about no technical skill is required, just a few dollars and a willingness to name a target. On the credit union front, the sense among experts is that the largest institutions – perhaps the top 25 or 50 – may have credible DDoS mitigation tools in place. As for the many thousands of others, the collective opinion is that probably most are unprotected. That could paint an attractive bull’s-eye for crooks. “There’s a trend where we see attacks going down market,” said Novak, “where the criminals are attacking smaller financial institutions because they don’t have the same defenses as the big banks.” Source: http://www.cutimes.com/2013/09/13/threat-of-the-week-sept-11-quiet-but-ddos-on-the-r

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Threat of the Week: Sept. 11 Quiet But DDoS On The Rise (Again)