Category Archives: DDoS Criminals

Amazon cloud infested with DDoS botnets

Security researchers have found yet another exploit on the Amazon cloud computing platform through the Elasticsearch distributed search engine tool. According to analysis, hackers are able to gain access to the search engine to deploy a battalion of botnets on Amazon cloud. The vulnerability should be a cause of alarm and, therefore, merits the attention of enterprises because it could manipulate Amazon cloud platforms in an attempt to launch distributed denial of service attacks against hundreds of thousands of websites. Amazon cloud users can a representational state transfer API to search various documents through Elasticsearch, an open-source search engine server built based on Java. It is more popular among cloud environments for its distributed architecture that enables multiple nodes. Researchers found security issues on the versions 1.1.x of Elasticsearch because its API scripting lacks a mechanism to authenticate access and a sandbox security infrastructure. Therefore, anyone, including hackers, can penetrate Elasticsearch just so easy. After that, attackers could carry out several malicious activities using Elasticsearch’s scripting capability such as carrying out arbitrary code on the server. As of now there is no patch coming from the developers of Elasticsearch. Nonetheless, versions 1.2.0 and up are safe from being exploited by hackers. New offshoots of Mayday Trojan for Linux has been spotted over the past week and the malware already launched DDoS attacks against targets DNS amplification. A Mayday variant was reported to be running on an Amazon server that has been compromised through the Elasticsearch exploit, though there are other platforms that could have been potentially manipulated. However, the Mayday variant did not resort to DNS amplification on the compromised EC2 instances. Instead it was used to launch attacks by flooding several websites with UDP traffic. As a result, many regional banking institutions in the United States and electronics companies in Japan had to transfer their IP addresses to DDoS mitigation service vendors. The Amazon EC2-run virtual machines were also reported to have been attacked by hackers through a CVE-2014-3120 exploit in the 1.1.x versions of Elasticsearch. Researchers observed that many commercial enterprises still use those versions. According also to security researchers, attackers have changed proof-of-concept exploit code for CVE-2014-3120 to install a Web shell developed based on Perl. A Web shell is a script that enables hackers to deploy Linux shell commands backdoor through the Web. The script was then further manipulated to download a fresh variant of the Mayday DDoS botnet. Amazon has already notified its customers about the issue. Source: http://www.techwalls.com/amazon-cloud-infested-ddos-botnets/

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Amazon cloud infested with DDoS botnets

“Chinese YouTube” Used as DDoS attack Machine

Even the biggest websites in the world are vulnerable to DDoS. Want proof? Well, all throughout this past April, a hacker took advantage of a hole in Sohu.com’s security to launch Persistent Cross-Site Swapping (XSS) attacks against various targets across the globe. Sohu.com, in case you don’t know, is one of the largest websites in the world – in fact 24th largest, according to Alexa Top 100 Ranking. But, for all its size and multi-billion dollar net worth, Sohu could be exploited by hackers who managed to convert its popularity into a massive Persistent XSS enabled DDoS attack. Devastating New DDoS Attack Method At its basis, Persistent XSS is a crafty type of malicious code injection. This injection method involves convincing a server to save data from an outside source (the hacker) and then refresh the data every time a new browser accesses the page. In this attack, the hacker saved to Sohu’s server a JS script that runs a DDoS tool. To do this, he placed a malicious JS script within the avatar image of a fabricated user profile. As with most video sites, this infected user picture would then show up next to any comments wrote by this profile, on Sohu’s video pages. The hacker was smart enough to write a JS script that would hijack every new browser that accessed a video page with the infected comment, forcing it to run a sent DDoS to the target site. The hacker programmed the script to send GET requests to the target once a second. Imagine; thousands of users watching a video on Sohu sending malicious GET requests every second. These bad requests add up quickly, quickly growing to millions every minute. Interestingly enough, the hacker also had the brains to put his infected comment on the most popular and longest playing videos, so the viewers would rack up DDoS requests even faster. This large security event goes to show that even powerful websites can be manipulated by hackers. Where Will the Next Attack Come From? It’s difficult to say. This case study shows that hackers will use whatever means necessary to take down their targets. Without 3rd party protection services, most websites can only defend what they’ve seen already–they can only react after they have been hit. In this instance, the hacker was clever enough to fly under the radar and avoid detection by Sohu’s watchful IT team. If the hacker had chosen a target without a DDoS protection service, Sohu might still be a giant DDoS machine causing havoc on innocent websites. Source: http://www.economicvoice.com/chinese-youtube-used-as-ddos-machine/  

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“Chinese YouTube” Used as DDoS attack Machine

100+ DDoS events over 100GB/sec reported this year

Arbor Networks released global DDoS attack data derived from its ATLAS threat monitoring infrastructure. The data shows an unparalleled number of volumetric attacks in the first half of 2014 with over…

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100+ DDoS events over 100GB/sec reported this year

DoJ provides update on Gameover Zeus and Cryptolocker disruption

The Justice Department filed a status report with the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania updating the court on the progress in disrupting the Gameover Zeus botnet an…

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DoJ provides update on Gameover Zeus and Cryptolocker disruption

17-Year-Old Behind Norway DDoS Attacks This Week

On Thursday, the Norwegian police have arrested and charged a 17-year-old in connection to the recent massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks directed at major financial institutions and other businesses in the country. The teen, from the city of Bergen, on Norway’s west coast, claimed to be part of the hacktivist group Anonymous Norway, who, in a Twitter message, dismissed any connection to him or the DDoS incidents. On the day of the attack, the teenager sent a letter to the media, claiming to be part of Anonymous and saying that “the motivation behind the current attacks and the next attacks in the future is to get the community to wake up. The number of major IT security attacks is increasing and there is nothing being done to prevent such events.” Evidence that Anonymous Norway was not involved in the incidents is the fact that the boy joined the group’s Facebook page on the same day of the attack. Furthermore, the hacker outfit provided a Pastebin link in a new tweet, pointing to the identity of the perpetrator; they did not create the post, just scooped it up. Initially, the youngster was charged with gross vandalism, which carries a maximum prison sentence of six years in Norway. However, since he has no record and is still a minor, this should be greatly reduced. According to News in English, Frode Karlsen of the Bergen police told Norwegian Broadcasting that the authorities are taking the matter seriously because this sort of attack can have significant impacts on society, like individuals not being able to reach emergency services in case they needed help. After his arrest, the teen cooperated in the investigation and clarified the nature of his actions. His defense lawyer stated that “he’s sorry for having caused all this and has laid his cards on the table.” The DDoS attack, which occurred on Tuesday, was considered among the largest ever seen in Norway and leveraged the vulnerable “pingback” WordPress feature. Its increased significance is due to the fact that it targeted layers three (network) and four (transport) of the OSI model, as well as layer seven (application), at the same time. Mitigating an application layer DDoS attack is not too easy, because the requests are directed at the application interface and mimic legitimate behavior, which makes filtering out the bad traffic more difficult. The attack aimed at disrupting the online services of major financial institutions in Norway (Norges Bank, Sparebank 1, Storebrand, Gjensidige, Nordea, Danske Bank), as well as other business, like Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and Norwegian Air. The website of the largest telecommunications company in Norway, Telenor, was also affected. Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/17-Year-Old-Behind-Norway-DDoS-Attacks-this-Week-450391.shtml

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17-Year-Old Behind Norway DDoS Attacks This Week

Norway banks hit in largest-ever DDoS attack, Anonymous ‘takes credit’

Norway’s top financial institutions have been hit in what appears to be a coordinated cyber-attack, the biggest-ever the country has experienced. Anonymous Norway may be responsible for the operation. The Tuesday attack targeted at least eight top Norway companies, including central Norges Bank, Sparebank 1, Danske Bank and insurance companies Storebrand and Gjensidige. Three Norwegian airlines and a big telecommunication company may also have been affected by the same attack. The malicious bombardment with requests caused traffic problems for their website and disrupted access throughout the day. This affected the banks’ online payment services as well. “The scale is not the largest we have seen, but it is the first time it has hit so many central players in the finance sector in Norway,” said the head of Evry’s security team, Sverre Olesen in an interview with Dagens Næringsliv business newspaper. Evry provides services to many of the affected companies and was busy dealing with the emergency. The company said the attackers used a vulnerability in the blogging platform WordPress and other venues to hit the websites. They didn’t appear to try to hack into the targets’ networks and try to steal any personal information, it added. The source of the attack was abroad, Evry said. Norway’s National Security Authority (Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet, NSM) said it was investigating the attack, but could not identify the perpetrators yet. The newspaper said it received an email signed by Anonymous Norway claiming responsibility for the DDoS attack on the banks. The email came before the news about it broke. But a tweet on the Anonymous Norway Twitter account denied the hacktivist group’s involvement, saying they were “laughing at those who think we are behind the attacks.” Source: http://rt.com/news/171724-norway-banks-anonymous-ddos/

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Norway banks hit in largest-ever DDoS attack, Anonymous ‘takes credit’

Brute-force bot busts shonky PoS passwords

RAM scrapers foisted on 60 terminals A botnet has compromised 60 point of sale (PoS) terminals by brute-force password attacks against poorly-secured connections, FireEye researchers say.…

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Brute-force bot busts shonky PoS passwords

Facebook scuttles 250k-strong crypto-currency botnet

As noose tightens, VXer pleades: ‘Stop breaking my ballz’ Facebook has taken down a Greek botnet that at its peak compromised 50,000 accounts and infected 250,000 computers to mine crypto-currencies, steal email and banking details and pump out spam.…

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Facebook scuttles 250k-strong crypto-currency botnet