We have all seen the headlines: another botnet dismantled, and we can all rest easy that the threat that has been plaguing us for all those years is now no longer an issue. After the headlines, howeve…
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Revisiting takedown wins: Are users in the developing world getting left behind?
Applications are becoming more accessible on the web across all industries including gaming, e-commerce, software, and media. This is great for reaching new customers around the globe, but along with …
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Cloud security: Integrated global CDN with DDoS mitigation and WAF
Hackers bombarded Carphone Warehouse with online traffic as a smokescreen while they stole the personal and banking details of 2.4 million people, according to sources with knowledge of the incident. The retailer revealed at the weekend that its security had been breached in a “sophisticated” attack. It is now thought that criminals used a cyber attack technique known as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) as a cover to help them infiltrate the retailer’s systems and perpetrate one of Britain’s biggest ever data thefts. To mount a DDoS attack, a global network of hijacked computers, known as a botnet, is used to bombard the target computers with traffic, overloading them and potentially forcing them offline. The ensuing technical problems can serve as a distraction for security staff, allowing hackers to exploit software vulnerabilities or stolen administrator credentials to break into systems and extract data undetected. A source with knowledge of the attack on Carphone said its online retail systems had come under bombardment before the major data theft was noticed on Wednesday last week. The millions affected are customers of OneStopPhoneShop.com , e2save.com and Mobiles.co.uk , as well as Carphone and its own mobile operator, iD Mobile. The systems broken into also held data for Talk Mobile and TalkTalk Mobile, the retailer said. Victims were advised to ask their bank to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, although on Monday there were no verified reports of fraud using the stolen data, sources said. Hackers who steal personal data often sell it in bulk on digital black markets to other criminals who seek to use it to commit fraud. According to internet security experts, criminals are increasingly using DDoS attacks to disguise their intrusions. In the most famous case, in 2011, Sony’s PlayStation Network, an online gaming service, was shut down for weeks after the personal and financial details of 77 million customers were stolen. The chief of the PlayStation division told the US Congress that a simultaneous bombardment of traffic against the network “may have made it more difficult to detect this intrusion quickly”. Subsequent examples of DDoS smokescreens include a 2012 attack on a bank during which card date was stolen and $9m drained from accounts via cash machines around the world. A warning that online bombardment can be a “diversionary tactic” for fraudsters is now part of official cyber security advice to US banks. Carphone Warehouse, which is contacting customers affected and co-operating with police and the Information Commissioner’s Office, declined to comment. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/cpw/11794521/Carphone-Warehouse-hackers-used-traffic-bombardment-smokescreen.html
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Carphone Warehouse hackers used DDoS attack as smokescreen
The International DOTA 2 tournament is underway, but a reported DDoS attack forced Valve to suspend the matches for several hours. The tournament has had several Internet-related problems since it began, but commentators confirmed that a DDoS attack was indeed to blame for today’s outage. It’s a funny thing that even an official Valve tournament, with all the top players in the world on the same stage, still needs to deal with all the same outage problems that average gamers have to deal with all the time. There is no LAN mode for DOTA 2. We’ve contacted Valve for comment and will respond with any update. The matches are up and running again. A DDoS is a rudimentary form of hack where people overwhelm a given server with a gigantic number of false requests, rendering it unable to respond. DDoS attacks and other Internet tomfoolery are a an unfortunate side effect of video games in general: virtual vandals have a habit of knocking down everything from smaller PC games to PSN and Xbox Live. Video games have an outsize presence amongst the young and internet-savvy, making them an ideal, if monumentally annoying, target for coordinated groups and lone actors alike. The international DOTA 2 tournament carries with it a record $18 million prize purse, raised through crowd-funding and in game purchases. It’s a landmark purse for eSports, carrying with it the sort of legitimacy that only outsize rewards for obsessive skill can provide. You can watch the proceedings below on the live Youtube stream, though Valve also provides a newcomers stream with explanation and commentary for people who don’t know the ins and outs of the game. It’s complicated, no doubt, but then again, so is football. Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2015/08/04/ddos-attack-temporarily-shuts-down-international-dota-2-tournament/
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DDoS Attack Temporarily Shuts Down International ‘DOTA 2? Tournament
In what it said was support for the ongoing curriculum protests, hacker group Anonymous Asia yesterday launched a third wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against the Web sites of two political parties and a government ministry. The Web sites of the New Party, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the KMT Taipei branch office and the Ministry of Economic Affairs were attacked for more than an hour. According to reports by Storm Media Group, Anonymous launched its first wave of DDoS attacks under the name “Anonymous #Op Taiwan” on Friday last week by locking down the Presidential Office and Ministry of Education Web sites for five hours. A notice released by the group said: “We are everywhere and nowhere. Taiwan’s police are not exempt [from our attacks], and all police must take responsibility for this incident. We cannot permit the use of violence or pepper spray on peacefully demonstrating people. When you hurt the Taiwanese people, revenge will be sought. We cannot forget, support us and the corrupt officials will be afraid of us. Taiwan’s government, expect us.” On Sunday, the group launched a second wave of DDoS attacks against the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of National Defense, the National Academy of Educational Research and CtiTV, a television station generally sympathetic toward the KMT, the report said. In a Facebook post on Sunday, New Party Chairperson Yok Mu-ming (???) said the DDoS attacks were serious national security concerns. “Do we not see China as our enemy and try to prevent Beijing hacking our Web sites? What I’m seeing now is like the opening salvoes of a Taiwanese civil war,” Yok said. Yok called on the public to put pressure on the Presidential Office and National Security Bureau to look into the attacks and find out who was behind them. “We must know if the motives are against curriculum changes or if there are other ulterior motives,” he said. Shortly after Yok’s Facebook post the New Party Web site was hacked. Anonymous Asia said on Facebook: “Yok Mu-ming, are you looking for us? Here we come.” Anonymous Asia is a loose coalition of hackers and Internet activists. The group describes itself as “an internet gathering” with “a very loose and decentralized command structure that operates on ideas rather than directives” and has been known for high-profile public DDoS attacks on government, religious, and corporate Web sites. Source: http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2015/08/04/2003624588
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Curriculum Protests: DDoS attacks launched on official, pan-blue Web sites
Planned Parenthood websites have gone down and are, according to the main page, undergoing maintenance. In a statement emailed to SCMagazine.com on Thursday, Dawn Laguens, executive VP of Planned Parenthood, said that the Planned Parenthood websites were the target of a DDoS attack. “Today, the Planned Parenthood websites experienced a wide scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a hacker tactic to overwhelm websites with massive amounts of traffic to block any legitimate traffic from getting in,” Laguens said. The websites were back online shortly after the attack, but are scheduled to remain down throughout Thursday for security purposes, Laguens said, adding that during this time visitors are being redirected to the organization’s Facebook pages. Following reports that politically motivated attackers released website databases, Planned Parenthood announced on Monday that it is investigating possible unauthorized access to its systems. Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/planned-parenthood-websites-downed-in-ddos-attack/article/429563/
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Planned Parenthood websites downed in DDoS attack
Easy to hack universal remote BIND DoS hole leaves DNS open to attack Gird your loins internet: Attackers now have the ability to disrupt large swathes of the web through a remote denial of service vulnerability found in the most widely used software for DNS servers.…
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Critical BIND bug scores PATCH YESTERDAY grading
On July 2, a cyber attack was coordinated against several New Jersey-based gambling websites and continued throughout the July 4th holiday weekend. At least four online casinos were affected and experience downtime, and we placed on alert as the State Division of Gaming Enforcement commenced their investigation. Although this is the first time the country had seen an attack on online gaming websites, it isn’t the first time that hackers have targeted casinos. Back in 2014, Sands Casino in Las Vegas had experienced an IT catastrophe that led to the shutdown of PCS and servers, wiping many of their hard drives clean. Bloomberg Business writers Ben Elgin and Michael Riley explained that this wasn’t an Ocean’s Eleven heist; someone had a personal vendetta against the company, specifically CEO and majority owner Sheldon Adelson. Frank Cilluffo, director of George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, later disclosed that they believe this digital conflict was perpetrated by Iran. Many feared that this was the beginning of a cyber war, as the nation’s enemies discovered a way to injure American companies to the point that it would incite a government response. Surprisingly, Sands had managed to keep most of the details of the incident under wraps for almost a year. At the time, it was the biggest strike on US corporate infrastructure, prior to the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack from last November. Fast forward to this year’s July 4th weekend, David Rebuck of the State Division of Gaming Enforcement Director confirms that there was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, where the 30-minute downtime occurred due to the hackers flooding the sites with data, rendering the them inoperative. Atlantic City’s Bill Hughes Jr., head of Cybersecurity of law firm Cooper Levenson, compares the attack to a traffic gridlock, where “the parkway becomes a parking lot.” The hackers threatened to launch a more powerful attack within 24 hours and revealed they would sustain this breach unless the casino operators paid a ransom to be paid in bitcoins, an internet currency that has proven popular with online criminals even though it does have its legitimate uses. Luckily, no further attacks were reported to the State Division of Gaming Enforcement. While gambling was legalized in Atlantic City in 1976 according to information portal Mayfair Casinos, online casinos had only been legal since 2013 which makes this strike rather sudden. Sudden, maybe, but not random. Rebuck tells NJ.com that they have an idea of who was behind this hacking incident, saying that this individual is a known actor and has a history of this types of attacks. Rebuck did not divulge any more details of the perpetrator, along with the websites impacted and amount paid in ransom. Despite the occurrences in the past year, University of Nevada’s Center for Gaming Research Director David Schwartz says that American online casinos are still not a major target for hackers, unlike gaming sites hosted on servers outside of the country which usually have a demand for ransom. Source: http://www.casinoscamreport.com/2015/07/22/nj-casinos-cyber-attack-still-under-investigation/
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NJ Casino’s DDoS Attack Still Under Investigation
On Monday, hacktivists said they had stepped up their operation to gain access to Canadian government secrets after a mounted police officer shot and killed an activist at an environmental protest in BC. The million-strong army of Anonymous group hacktivists is waging a cyberwar on Canadian authorities and law enforcers after a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer fatally shot an activist wearing a Guy Fawkes mask at an environmental protest in British Columbia last week.The shooting in Dawson Creek, which Anonymous says was unprovoked, triggered a vehement response from the group, who launched a massive cyberoperation codenamed AnonDown to force Canadian police to reveal the identity of the shooter. The declaration of war on Saturday was followed by a series of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on RCMP web pages the next day, including on its national website, the Dawson Creek affiliate site and the RCMP Heritage Center page. On Monday, hacktivists said they had stepped up the operation to gain access to government secrets. “AnonDown has accessed docs marked ‘secret’ inside Canadian government. It’s not just a DDoS op anymore kiddos,” the activists said in a taunting tweet. Fatal Shooting The killing of the protester took place last Thursday when Canadian mounted police responded to a disturbance at a public hearing where a controversial dam project was being discussed. Upon arrival, police singled out a masked man who allegedly refused to surrender and was shot down, police said, adding that a pocket knife was later recovered at the scene. Anonymous, however, told the local Globe and Mail newspaper that lawmen gunned down the wrong man. The man who allegedly caused the disturbance during the dam debates had left by the time police moved in. They said the victim, who succumbed to the gunshot wound later at a hospital, was fired at while trying to put the knife on the ground. The policeman behind the killing has not been identified publicly. In a video statement, Anonymous vowed to “identify the RCMP officer involved and release the docs on the Internet because the world has the right to know every detail about killer cops.” Operation Begins In a Saturday video statement, Anonymous said they would seek justice for the slain activist and avenge him if their demands are not met. They also pledged to rally the entire collective of hacktivists to “remove the RCMP cyber infrastructure from the Internet.” The first “cyber-shots” were fired on Sunday when the main RCMP website and Dawson Creek detachment site could not be accessed for several hours. The group later claimed responsibility for the outages. The Globe and Mail cited a Twitter posting, associated with the hacker group, which suggested “turning it off and back on again.” The main RCMP website was online on Monday. But Anonymous warned that there was more such actions to follow. “Our vengeance will be swift and powerful but it will not include violence,” they tweeted. Not So Harmless Denial-of-access attacks that involve flooding the target website with communication requests are often used to crash a site for a short period of time. Nevertheless, hacktivists’ threats to disrupt the work of police websites should not be taken lightly, the Globe and Mail cited a cybersecurity expert from the Defence Intelligence firm as saying on Sunday. Defence Intelligence Chief Executive Keith Murphy told the outlet that the group had a global reach of about one and a half million, and had proven in the past to go through with their threats. Source: http://sputniknews.com/world/20150720/1024824329.html#ixzz3gSiu0DZW
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Anonymous in Cyberwar With Canadian Gov’t After Mountie Killed Activist
Six months ago we experienced a 30Gb/sec and 60M PPS attack that was targeting over 1000 IPs on our network. Although we eventually stopped the attack with the aid of our upstream providers, a number …
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A comparative view of cloud-based DDoS protection services