Category Archives: DDoS Vendors

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks recovery costs an average of $3,000 per day for businesses

Organizations citing cybersecurity costs as an impediment to implementing a layered defense should rethink their priorities: Denial of service (DDoS) and malware infection recovery costs range into the thousands of dollars – per day. According to a report from Solutionary, organizations are spending a staggering amount of money in the aftermath of an attack: as much as $6,500 per hour to recover from DDoS attacks and more than $3,000 per day for up to 30 days to mitigate and recover from malware attacks. All of those third-party consultants, PR crews, incident response teams, mitigation software and other immediate investments add up, apparently. But other damages need to be considered as well: the report numbers don’t include revenue that may have been lost due to related systems downtime, or lost productivity. Nor do they include the intellectual property-related costs. “Cyber criminals are targeting organizations with advanced threats and attacks designed to siphon off valuable corporate IP and regulated information, deny online services to millions of users and damage brand reputation,” said Don Gray, chief security strategist with Solutionary. Unfortunately, the likelihood of suffering such an attack is, of course, going up. They’re also becoming focused on certain arenas. For instance, in addition to traditional network-layer attacks, a full 75% of DDoS attacks target Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protected components of web applications, the report found. The downside is that detecting and blocking attacks in encrypted protocols primarily used for legitimate traffic can be more complex than responding to historical TCP/UDP-based DDoS attacks. Malware attacks, meanwhile, are becoming vertical-specific. The report found that 80% of attempts to infect organizations with malware are directed at financial (45%) and retail (35%) organizations. These forays frequently arrive as targeted spam email, which attempts to coerce the recipient to execute an attachment or click on an infected link. Unfortunately, a full 54% of malware typically evades anti-virus detection. Only 46% of samples tested via VirusTotal by Solutionary were detected by anti-virus – indicating a clear need for companies to invest in multiple malware detection mechanisms. The report also found that Java is the most targeted software in exploit kits, replacing Adobe PDF exploits. Almost 40% of total exploits in exploit kits now target Java. When it comes to where attacks are originating, domestic IP addresses are the largest source of attacks against US organizations. “While there has been considerable discussion about foreign-based attacks against US organizations, 83% of all attacks against them originate from US IP address space, and the absolute quantity of these attacks vastly outnumbers attacks seen from any other country,” the company said. “One contributing factor is foreign attackers using compromised machines near attack targets in the US to help evade security controls. This attack localization strategy has also been observed in attacks on targets in other countries.” Attackers from other countries focus on different industry targets – 90% of all attack activity from China-based IP addresses is directed against the business services, technology and financial sectors. And a full 85% of all attack activity from Japan-based IP addresses identified by Solutionary was focused against the manufacturing industry. However, attacks targeting the financial sector appear to originate fairly evenly from attackers in many countries across the world. Attack techniques also vary significantly by country of origin. Among the top four non-US source countries, the majority of attack traffic from China is indicative of communication with already-compromised targeted devices, while Japanese and Canadian attackers appear to focus more on application exploit attempts. Attacks originating from Germany involve more botnet Command and Control (C&C) activity. For DDoS protection click here . Source: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/31247/malware-attack-recovery-costs-an-average-of-3000-per-day/

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Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks recovery costs an average of $3,000 per day for businesses

J.P. Morgan Confirms Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on Chase.com

The retail banking website of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) on Tuesday has come under a so-called “denial of service” attack, rendering it unusable for customers, a bank spokesman confirmed. The site first slowed earlier Tuesday, and in the afternoon it became unavailable. The bank is responding with increased security measures for the website, chase.com. The spokesman said no customer data had been compromised, but didn’t say when the site would be fully restored. The bank’s mobile-banking applications are working, and branches and automated teller machines aren’t impacted. The bank, the nation’s largest by assets, told customers in a Twitter message Tuesday afternoon that it is experiencing “intermittent issues,” followed by another message stating that the bank is working “on getting Chase Online back to full speed.” On the website, the bank posted: “Our website is temporarily unavailable. We’re working to quickly restore access. Please log on later.” Banks have been increasingly hit by cyberattacks over the last two years, including DOS attacks that increase the volume of website hits, slowing access to the sites by customers. Banks have been preparing in recent days for a new wave of DOS attacks, according to a banking industry source, including strengthening their firewalls. Citigroup Inc. (C) said in its annual earnings filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month that it, like other banks, was the victim of several cyberattacks in 2012 and previous years, and that it managed to detect and respond to these incidents “before they became significant.” The attacks nevertheless “resulted in certain limited losses in some instances.” For DDoS protection against your eCommerce website click here . Source: http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/03/12/jp-morgan-confirms-denial-service-attacks-on-chasecom/

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J.P. Morgan Confirms Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on Chase.com

GitHub Hit With Another DDoS Attack, Second In Two Days, And “Major Service Outage”

Services on code-sharing site GitHub have been disrupted for over an hour in what started as a “major service outage” because of a “brief DDoS attack.” This is the second DDoS attack in as many days and at least the third in the last several months: Yesterday, GitHub also reported a DDoS incident. And in October 2012, the service also went down due to malicious hackers. Today, the distributed denial of service incident has affected the site for at least an hour, starting at 10.43AM GMT with a major service outage. GitHub noted that the cause was a “another brief DDoS attack” and that service should be returning to normal. At 11.11AM, the site reported that some systems were still being affected. “Access to downloadable source code archives and uploaded files is temporarily down. We’re working to restore it asap,” it noted. There has been some debate over security at GitHub, with several people recently revealing the amount of sensitive information like passwords and private keys stored on publicly-accessible pages. On a code-sharing repository, this is not like blasting information as you might see in a display ad, but it’s the kind of information that can be found if you know how and where to look. And the DDoS attacks against GitHub go back some way. In Feburary 2012, for example, the site revealed a sustained attack that lasted for nearly a week. “This attack is global, and has been very intense at times. Yesterday morning, for example, github.com suddenly received requests from 10,000 times the number of clients it had handled the minute before,” Jesse Newland wrote on GitHub’s blog. That only resulted in an hour of total downtime. He also wrote that GitHub was putting in place measures to better protect against DDoS attacks in the future — although clearly not eliminate them completely. GitHub has had a lot of success in the last few years. With some 3 million developers using the site to post and share code; a recent $100 million round from Andreessen Horowitz; and other accolades, it exemplifies the wider trend of the rise of the enterprise startup — a status that likely also brings positive as negative attention. Update : Three hours later, everything is back up and working normally. We have reached out to ask whether GitHub has any more information about the incidents. Source: http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/10/github-hit-with-another-ddos-attack-second-in-two-days-and-major-service-outage/

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GitHub Hit With Another DDoS Attack, Second In Two Days, And “Major Service Outage”

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection Hardware for the Data Centre… Or Not!

Earlier this month, Juniper Networks purchased Webscreen Systems from Accumuli a UK-based IT security specialist. With this acquisition, Juniper is furthering a strategy to try to deal with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks from within a data centre by adding more hardware. While one can understand why a company that produces and sells hardware would see hardware as the best fix, there are several reasons why this is the wrong solution for most consumers, and could actually unnecessarily cost you time, money and brand integrity. Given the varied range in DDoS hardware protection options out there, it seems that many feel this is the strongest solution to protect their online presence from a DDoS attack. However, after more than 15 years in the industry, I can think of five good reasons why using DDoS hardware protection in a data centre hosting environment is a flawed strategy. REASON #1 Increased costs passed on to customers. With DDoS hardware protection, the expense of purchasing, updating and maintaining the hardware, plus the necessary staff to manage it in a data centre hosting environment, will be high. These costs will be passed on to you, the hosting customer. REASON #2 More points of failure. By adding another piece of hardware, you are adding yet another point of failure. In all things networking, keeping your number of points of potential failure low is a key to success. Studies show that firewalls, IDS and other similar hardware protection platforms have over a 42 percent chance of failing. [Arbor Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report 2011 ] Do you want to be on that platform when it fails? REASON #3 Someone else’s problem becomes your problem. In a data centre environment, multiple customers often share resources (whether they know it or not). Platforms like servers, switches, routers and firewalls are often provisioned with more than one client. If you are sharing DDoS hardware protection, you become vulnerable to the problems of other clients sharing that device. REASON #4 One size never really fits all. A solution for a data centre will try to be generic enough to fit all clients’ needs, which means it probably won’t be specific enough for your exact requirements, or robust enough to handle more sophisticated attacks. REASON #5 How focused are the people watching your gear? Even with the best DDoS hardware protection out there, you might as well try to protect your websites with a toaster if there isn’t a proficient team dedicated to administering and managing the hardware. In a hosting environment, the operations team has many responsibilities, of which managing DDoS hardware is a low priority one. Even if someone is paying attention and able to divert their focus to your servers for a short while during a DDoS attack, it won’t be for long, and repeated DDoS attacks would likely go unmitigated, or your IP would be null-routed to save resources and minimize collateral damage. With so many vendors offering DDoS hardware protection, it might be tempting to conclude that it’s a safer option that will serve your business well. However, cloud-based DDoS protection offers many benefits that are not possible with DDoS hardware solutions, with few of the risks. To learn more about DOSarrest cloud-based DDoS protection and mitigation services, click here . Jag Bains, CTO, DOSarrest Internet Security (Formerly Director of Network Engineering and Operations for Peer1 Hosting)

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Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection Hardware for the Data Centre… Or Not!

Radware launches cloud-based DDoS attack mitigation system

At RSA Conference 2013 in San Francisco, Radware announced DefensePipe, an integrated and comprehensive solution to help mitigate volumetric DDoS attacks which threaten to saturate a customer's Intern…

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Radware launches cloud-based DDoS attack mitigation system

Helping ISPs defend customers against bot infections

At RSA Conference 2013 Kindsight announced the Kindsight Botnet Security service to help Internet service providers detect botnet activity in the network and protect subscribers against bot infections…

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Helping ISPs defend customers against bot infections

Five tips to combat a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack

Who’s next? That’s a question probably lingering on the minds of many American banking executives these days. After all, eight U.S. banks were hammered by distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber attacks in recent weeks and more could be in the works. A DDoS attack typically floods a website or network with so much traffic that it shuts down. The attack can last anywhere from hours to days, depending on how long it takes the victim to divert the traffic and how long the perpetrator can keep blasting the traffic at the victim’s site and network. The hacktivist group known as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters took credit for the cyber attacks on the banks. In posts on the website www.pastebin.com, the group said the DDoS attacks were in retaliation to a YouTube video insulting the Prophet Muhammad and many Muslims. Could this wave of cyber attacks be the beginning of a new movement? Will hacktivist groups join cyber criminals, ruthless competitors and even angry customers in launching DDoS attacks to shut down company websites? It’s possible. Especially since the tools to launch DDoS attacks are cheap and readily accessible. Currently, there are more than 50 DDoS tools 1 on the market. And if DDoS attacks do become more prevalent, how much damage can they cause? Well, according to one study 2 more than 65% of the respondents said when their websites go down it costs them about $10,000 per hour or $240,000 per day. Most of these companies were in the finance, telecom, travel and IT industries. These costs are due to lost business and lost resources when staff members have to work on matters related to the attack, instead of on their regular jobs. Retailers who sell most of their merchandise online said when their websites go down, it costs them about $100,000 per hour. If this is indeed the case, what can organizations do to protect themselves? Here are five tips offered by computer security experts: Maintain a high level of awareness to spot suspicious site traffic and other anomalies. Install the most advanced intrusion detection signatures (IDS) and intrusion prevention signatures (IDS) as defense mechanisms against cyber attacks. Make sure you have automatic updates scheduled for your anti-virus and other software programs. Review incident recovery plans and employee training strategies to ensure that your staff knows what to do if you do experience a DDoS attack or other form of cyber attack. Work closely with Internet Service Providers, law enforcement and vendors when faced with cyber threats and other suspicious cyber activity. Have you experienced a DDoS cyber attack? If so, how did you respond? We would like to hear about it. Contact us . Source: http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=61781aa7-caf5-4da1-8c2a-18b4590f3b0d  

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Five tips to combat a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack

Predictions for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks in 2013 will be application based

Twenty-five percent of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that occur in 2013 will be application-based, according to Gartner, Inc. During such incidents, attackers send out targeted commands to applications to tax the central processing unit (CPU) and memory and make the application unavailable. “2012 witnessed a new level of sophistication in organized attacks against enterprises across the globe, and they will grow in sophistication and effectiveness in 2013,” said Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “A new class of damaging DDoS attacks and devious criminal social-engineering ploys were launched against U.S. banks in the second half of 2012, and this will continue in 2013 as well-organized criminal activity takes advantage of weaknesses in people, processes and systems.” High-bandwidth DDoS attacks are becoming the new norm and will continue wreaking havoc on unprepared enterprises in 2013. A new class of damaging DDoS attacks was launched against U.S. banks in the second half of 2012, sometimes adding up to 70 Gbps of noisy network traffic blasting at the banks through their Internet pipes. Until this recent spate of attacks, most network-level DDoS attacks consumed only five Gbps of bandwidth, but more recent levels made it impossible for bank customers and others using the same pipes to get to their websites. Hackers use DDoS attacks to distract security staff so that they can steal sensitive information or money from accounts. People continue to be the weakest link in the security chain, as criminal social engineering ploys reach new levels of deviousness in 2013. In 2012, several different fraud scams that took social engineering tactics to new heights of deviousness have been reported, including criminals approaching people in person as law enforcement or bank officers to help them through account migration that then comprised their bank accounts. Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/enterprise-it/security/25-of-DDoS-attacks-to-be-application-based-in-2013/articleshow/18613476.cms

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Predictions for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks in 2013 will be application based

California financial institution website hit with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack costing $900,000

A Christmas Eve cyberattack against the Web site of a regional California financial institution helped to distract bank officials from an online account takeover against one of its clients, netting thieves more than $900,000. At approximately midday on December 24, 2012, organized cyber crooks began moving money out of corporate accounts belonging to Ascent Builders , a construction firm based in Sacramento, Calif. In short order, the company’s financial institution – San Francisco-based Bank of the West — came under a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, a digital assault which disables a targeted site using a flood of junk traffic from compromised PCs. KrebsOnSecurity contacted Ascent Builders on the morning of Dec. 26 to inform them of the theft, after interviewing one of the money mules used in the scam. Money mules are individuals who are willingly or unwittingly recruited to help the fraudsters launder stolen money and transfer the funds abroad. The mule in this case had been hired through a work-at-home job offer after posting her resume to a job search site, and said she suspected that she’d been conned into helping fraudsters. Ascent was unaware of the robbery at the time, but its bank would soon verify that a series of unauthorized transactions had been initiated on the 24th and then again on the 26th. The money mule I spoke with was just one of 62 such individuals in the United States recruited to haul the loot stolen from Ascent . Most of the mules in this case were sent transfers of between $4,000 and $9,000, but several of them had bank accounts tied to businesses, to which the crooks wired huge transfers from Ascent’s account; five of the fraudulent transfers were for amounts ranging from $80,000 to $100,000. Mark Shope , president of Ascent Builders, said that when the company’s controller originally went online on the morning of Dec. 24 to check the firm’s accounts, her browser wouldn’t let her access the bank’s page. She didn’t know it at the time, but her computer was being remotely controlled by the attackers’ malware, which blocked her from visiting the bank’s site. “It said the bank was offline for 24 hours, and we couldn’t get in to the site,” Shope said. “We called the bank and they said everything was fine.” But soon enough, everything would not be fine from Bank of the West’s end. Not long after putting through a batch of fraudulent automated clearing house (ACH) and wire transfers from Ascent’s accounts, the fraudsters initiated a DDoS attack against the bank’s Web site, effectively knocking it offline. It’s not clear what tactics or botnets may have been used in the DDoS attack, but the cyberheist+DDoS approach matches the profile of cybercrime gangs using the Gameover Trojan – a ZeuS Trojan variant that has been tied to numerous DDoS attacks initiated to distract attention from high-dollar cyberheists.   Shope said the FBI is actively investigating the breach. The FBI declined to comment for this story. Bank of the West also did not respond requests for comment. But a law enforcement source working the case and speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed that the bank was subjected to a DDoS attack at the time of the robbery. The law enforcement official added that Ascent may not have been the only victim that day at Bank of the West, and that several other businesses and banks in the local area had been similarly robbed on or around Christmas Eve. Shope said Bank of the West has been able to claw back about half of the stolen funds, and expects to recover a great deal more. He said many of the bigger fraudulent transfers went to other businesses. For example, one of the mules was either running or working at a Hertz equipment rental franchise on the East Coast, and had called Ascent Builders to complain after the bank discovered the fraud and began clawing back large transfers. That mule, apparently unaware he was helping thieves launder stolen money, was calling to find out what happened to his $82,000. “We got a call from a Hertz rental equipment company back east, and they said “Why did you take this deposit out of our account?’ Shope recalled. “I asked him what he thought it was for, and he said, “Oh, this was for some equipment that we were purchasing for you guys from Russia, and we already sent the money on [to Russia], so what’s going on?”‘ A few thoughts about this attack. If you run a business and suddenly find yourself unable to log in to your commercial account, pick up the phone and call your bank to inquire about any recent money transfer activity. Very often, malware that thieves use to steal banking passwords in these cyberheists will also redirect the victim to an error page that says the bank’s site is down for maintenance. If this happens to you, call your bank and ask them to check your accounts (don’t trust a customer service phone number offered on a “down for maintenance” page; call the number on your bank card or search online for the institution’s customer service number). Also, get educated about the risks of banking online with a business account, and then take steps to make sure your organization isn’t the next victim. Regulation E limits the liability for consumers who lose money due to unauthorized account activity online (provided they notify their financial institution of the fraudulent activity within 60 days of a statement). Businesses do not enjoy such protections, although a couple of recent court cases brought by cyberheist victims against their banks have gone in favor of the businesses, suggesting that banks may find it increasingly difficult to disavow financial liability in the wake of these attacks going forward. Finally, consider banking online with a dedicated system. This among several recommendations I include in a short list of other tips that small businesses should consider when banking online.

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California financial institution website hit with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack costing $900,000

Antibot: Network-based botnet removal tool

Botnets are flourishing with new packaging, new methods and new business models. ZeroAccess, the world’s fastest-growing botnet, infected millions of computers in 2012, using them to commit large-scal…

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Antibot: Network-based botnet removal tool