Category Archives: DDoS Vendors

DDoS attack on 4Chan by Lizard Squad’s DDoS Rent-A-Tool Lizard Stresser

Lizard Squad’s rent-a-tool Lizard Stresser in action against 4Chan. The infamous band of hackers, Lizard Squad, which brought down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live servers through Christmas with DDoS attack, are in the news again. This time the target is 4Chan.org, the popular image boarding website and tool used is the DDoS on rent, Lizard Stresser. 4Chan has been brought down by Lizard Stresser through a DDoS attack and still offline. Tweets from Lizard Squad indicate that the someone has rented the Lizard Squad’s rent-a-tool for DDoS to attack 4Chan website. Lizard Squad allegedly used a 1200 GB/s DDoS attack against PSN and XBL networks and is offering double the size of attacks on rent. At present details are sketchy and it is not known who has rented the Lizard Stresser to bring down the 4Chan website. Apparently Lizard Stresser was taken offline two days ago after somebody doxed the userids on the server. The website hosting Lizard Stresser now serves a different login page The Lizard Stresser offers individuals a way to take down IP addresses without having to know anything about hacking or DDoS attacks and is available in multiple subscription packages which range from $5.99 / €4.93 for a 100-second attack to $129.99 / €107 for an eight and a half hour long denial of service incident. The Lizard Squad also offers lifetime packs, prices for which can go upto $500 / €411. The lifetime packs are valid for five years as per Lizard Stresser website. 4Chan renters seem to have opted for the 8 hours pack from the looks of it but there is no official confirmation from either the Lizard Squad or 4Chan regarding the attack except for the tweet above(now deleted*). For the time being, the 4Chan website is inaccessible and will stay this way probably until the attack ends or 4Chan admin devise some method to manage to protect themselves against it. Considering that Lizard Squad brought down the networks of bigger and better Sony and Microsoft, 4Chan admin have a hard task cut out for them. There is also a outside chance that the 4Chan may be really down for maintenance , but that is difficult to imagine as Lizard Squad are known to be vocal about their exploits. There were reports of 4Chan admins announcing a while ago that there will be some downtime due to server maintenance, so it might come back online very soon. We will be updating the story as soon as we get any feedback/confirmation from either Lizard Squad or 4Chan. Lizard Squad has also deleted the above tweet about renting the Lizard Stresser just moments ago and the 4Chan website home is still showing some broken images. Source: http://www.techworm.net/2015/01/4chan-ddosed-lizard-squads-ddos-rent-tool-lizard-stresser.html

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DDoS attack on 4Chan by Lizard Squad’s DDoS Rent-A-Tool Lizard Stresser

‘Bitcoin Baron’ claims credit for City of Columbia, KOMU DDoS attacks

He cited a 2010 SWAT raid in Columbia as his motivation behind the DDoS attacks. An individual is taking credit for the distributed denial of service attacks on the websites of the City of Columbia and KOMU-8 on Friday. KOMU posted about the attack on its Facebook page at 3:48 p.m. Friday, about three hours after the station had reported on a similar attack on the City of Columbia’s website earlier Friday. KOMU’s article included a statement from Assistant City Manager Tony St. Romaine indicating the activist group Anonymous was behind the attacks. Shortly after their site was attacked, KOMU received an email from a third party who indicated that he, not Anonymous, was behind both attacks. KOMU General Manager Marty Siddall said the individual referred to himself as “Bitcoin Baron.” Through his Twitter, Bitcoin Baron has connected himself to multiple other DDoS attacks. Bitcoin Baron said in a video that his motivation behind the attacks was a 2010 Columbia SWAT raid on the house of Jonathan Whitworth, who was presumed to be a marijuana dealer. During the raid, one of Whitworth’s dogs was fatally shot in front of his wife and child. “I decided that this should go viral once more to show everyone the true nature of how you and every police department does things,” Bitcoin Baron said in his video. Bitcoin Baron said in a tweet that no data was affected by any of the DDoS attacks. Prasad Calyam, assistant professor of computer science with a technical focus in cyber security, said DDoS attacks occur when a user creates a large amount of fake traffic that accesses a site’s servers all at once to crash the site. “(A DDoS attack) is a sort of brute force attack, where many machines are compromised to act like regular users in order to block real users from reaching the site,” he said. Calyam said DDoS attacks cannot be stopped as they occur, and he advised that locally blocking a website is the best way to deal with an attack. “(That is) because it’s hard for an Internet provider to block people from accessing your site,” he said. “The only way to prevent attacks is through an intrusion detection system, which can be really expensive … There are open source intrusion detection systems available, but they must be maintained and managed by experts.” Siddall said KOMU is working with their third-party Internet provider to prevent future attacks. Source: http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/12/29/bitcoin-baron-claims-credit-city-columbia-komu-ddo/

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‘Bitcoin Baron’ claims credit for City of Columbia, KOMU DDoS attacks

DDoS attack takes down City of Columbia website

Columbia Deputy City Manager says a hacker group took responsibility for the attack on GoColumbiaMo.com A City of Columbia official said the city’s website, gocolumbiamo.com, suffered a cyber attack Wednesday night, and the website will be down until further notice. Deputy City Manager Tony St. Romaine said Anonymous, a group associated with cyber attacks and hacking activism, took down the city’s website with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. St. Romaine said the group cited a drug-related SWAT raid in Columbia in 2010, where police shot two dogs in the house. A YouTube video shows a user taking credit for the attack, along with the SWAT raid from 2010. (Warning: the video contains strong language and graphic content.) A news release sent Friday morning said the city’s IT department was notified of an attack around 11 p.m. Wednesday. Deputy City Manager Tony St. Romaine told ABC 17 News IT staff worked through the night until 7 a.m. Thursday. The staff left the office, but continued to work from home. “This form of attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by flooding the website server with requests from multiple sources,” the release said. “In most cases, they involve forging of sender addresses so that the location of the attacking machines cannot easily be identified.” The release said this sort of attack renders city services provided online unavailable, and doesn’t compromise personal information. Source: http://www.abc17news.com/news/city-of-columbia-website-suffers-cyber-attack/30405572

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DDoS attack takes down City of Columbia website

Xbox Live and PSN Face DDoS Attacks Throughout Christmas Eve and Day

During a day when people are booting up their new Xbox Ones and PlayStation 4s for the first time, a group of Grinches have decided to try and ruin things for everyone online. During what is supposed to be one of the most joyful days of the year for families across the world, the hacker group Lizard Squad claims responsibility for hitting Microsoft’s Xbox Live and Sony’s PlayStation Network with DDoS attacks, Tech Worm reports. The Lizard Squad’s main Twitter account has been banned, but other representatives of the group (warning: NSFW language) are saying they are the reason why both Xbox Live and the PSN have been experiencing outages throughout the past 24 hours. In response, a pro gaming hacker crew called The Finest Squad has been exposing various members of the Lizard Squad to the proper authorities. Unfortunately, the deviant hacker group appears to always be a step ahead of The Finest Squad. Xbox’s servers are currently up, but they have been experiencing outages every few hours on the official server status page (which currently lists accessibility as “Limited”). The same could be said of Sony, as the official PlayStation Help Twitter made a comment about the PSN’s recent issues: Here’s to hoping these hackers get caught and the attacks stop. Go hack the Westboro or KKK websites instead of doing this sort of thing, Lizard Squad. Just leave the gaming community alone so we can play our new games in peace without bothering anyone. Source: http://arcadesushi.com/xbox-live-and-psn-face-ddos-attacks-throughout-christmas-eve-and-day/

DDoS attacks carry six-figure price tag for businesses

The average distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack costs large businesses an average of $444,000 in lost revenue and subsequent IT spending, according to a recent survey by B2B International. The same poll found that DDoS attacks hit the bottom line of small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) at an average clip of $52,000 per incident. Kaspersky Lab sponsored the annual survey, conducted by B2B International, which polled 3,900 respondents from 27 countries about IT infrastructure challenges they faced from April 2013 through May 2014. All businesses at risk Businesses of all sizes were polled, with approximately 17 % coming from large enterprises (5,000 to 50,000 employees), 12% from the large/medium category (1,500 to 5,000), 25% from the medium/small (250 to 1,500) enterprise segment, and the remaining from small businesses. Overall, nearly 1 in 5 businesses (18%) experienced a DDoS attack during the year-long study period. The polling then drilled down into business verticals that provide online financial services or operate public-facing websites. Among this subset that relies on 24/7 web access for clients, the survey found that 38% experienced at least one DDoS attack during the study period. When this subset was broken down into specific business verticals, the poll found that 49% of IT/technology firms suffered at least one DDoS incident during the study period, followed by e-commerce sites (44%), telecommunications (44%), media (42%), construction/engineering (40%) and finance (39%). Downtime = Money The most frequent effects of DDoS attacks include slow-loading web pages, inability to complete online transactions, or complete service disruption – all of which weigh heavily on a business that relies on the web for revenue. Survey respondents listed potential losses in revenue (33%) and damage to company brand (38%) as the two most negative outcomes from a DDoS attack. This is in lockstep with their management’s concerns, who list loss of revenue (26%) and customer trust (23%) as the most feared outcomes of such an attack. A disconnect between the potential threat of DDoS and investments to detect or mitigate these attacks is apparent when dissecting the survey. For example, media companies were fourth on the list of most targeted, by only 38% of respondents from these firms listed DDoS countermeasures as a security priority. Among e-commerce respondents, whose businesses may be most heavily affected by the effects of a DDoS attack, only 41% noted DDoS security investment as a priority. “Even if a company does not have a public-facing website, its finances and reputation can be seriously affected by DDoS attacks”, said Eugene Vigovsky, head of DDoS protection at Kaspersky Lab, in a statement. “It is known that DDoS can be organized not only to incapacitate online services or for ransom, but also to mask other cybercriminal activities, such as targeted attacks…to gain access to confidential data.” Watching your availability When it comes to online security, most organizations tend to focus on the confidentiality or integrity of data and services, often at the expense of availability, noted Lenin Aboagye, Director of IT, cloud and product security for data center provider IO. He told DatacenterDynamics that companies experiencing DDoS-related downtime stand to lose money every minute their web services are affected. “If you operate a downed e-commerce site, and people cannot make a purchase especially during this holiday season, then losses can be substantial”, he added. “Most organizations do not look into this area of security because it’s not considered a data breach event that requires customer notification.” Source: http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/12/ddos-attacks-carry-six-figure-price-tag-businesses

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DDoS attacks carry six-figure price tag for businesses

Alibaba : Cloud Suffered DDoS Attack for 14 Hours

A well-known game company on Alibaba Cloud Computing suffered a DDoS attack for 14 hours from December 20 to 21. However, Alibaba has not disclosed the name of the game company and why the company was attacked. Alibaba condemned the hacking attack and called on all Internet innovation companies to jointly resist hacking. Alibaba Cloud said in the microblogging “faced with hacker attacks, we cloud never compromise.” Source: http://www.4-traders.com/ALIBABA-GROUP-HOLDING-LTD-17916677/news/Alibaba–Cloud-Suffered-DDoS-Attack-for-14-Hours-19594653/

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Alibaba : Cloud Suffered DDoS Attack for 14 Hours

US Officials Believe North Korea Was Involved In Sony Hacks

U.S. officials say they believe that North Korea’s government was involved in the large-scale hack of Sony servers, which led to the leak of troves of Sony data from emails to unreleased projects, according to the NYT. Federal cyber-security sources say that there is evidence indicating that the hack was routed through computers in Singapore, Thailand, Italy, Bolivia and Cyprus, ABC reports. While the hack resulted in a dump of Sony data, including email, confidential materials, and unreleased projects, it also specifically targeted The Interview , a movie featuring Seth Rogen and James Franco. The theory that North Korea was behind the attack was initially dismissed when North Korea publicly denied involvement, but official sources believe that the North Korean government was “centrally involved” in the attacks. The New York Times reports that officials aren’t going on the record, and are unsure whether or not the White House will publicly accuse Kim Jong Un and North Korea of the attack. The hackers’ methodology is highly reminiscent of tactics used by Anonymous — timed dumps of sensitive data, DDOS attacks, etc. — which have thus far clouded the investigation. The Interview , which depicts the assassination attempt of Kim Jong Un, was slotted to be released on Christmas Day until Sony was forced to pull the movie. Amid 9/11-referencing threats from the hacker organization, which called itself the Guardians of Peace, five of the major theater chains said they would not show the film, leading Sony to pull back entirely. Source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/17/us-officials-believe-north-korea-was-involved-in-sony-hacks/

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US Officials Believe North Korea Was Involved In Sony Hacks

London teen pleads guilty to Spamhaus DDoS

Sentence will be passed in January next year A 17 year-old Londoner has pleaded guilty to a series of denial-of-service attacks against internet exchanges and the Spamhaus anti-spam service last year.…

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London teen pleads guilty to Spamhaus DDoS

London teen pleads guilty to SpamHaus DDoS attack

The London teen behind the massive denial-of-service attack (DDoS) on SpamHaus and Cloudflare has pleaded guilty. Technology blogger Brian Krebs reported over the weekend that 17-year-old Sean Nolan McDonough, also known by his hacker alias “Narko,” pleaded guilty on Dec. 10 to computer misuse and money laundering in connection with the attack. McDonough was arrested in September 2013 after he played a role in the March 19, 2013 DDoS attacks aimed at Spamhaus, a Dutch anti-spam group and international nonprofit. SpamHaus later moved its servers behind CloudFlare, which then pushed the attackers to devote their efforts toward the company’s network. The attack sent 85Gbps of traffic. The U.K. National Crime Agency told Krebs that, “court reporting restrictions are in place in respect to a juvenile offender, [and] as a consequence the NCA will not be releasing further detail.” Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/sean-nolan-mcdonough-narko-pleads-guilty/article/388387/

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London teen pleads guilty to SpamHaus DDoS attack

Could Tor fall victim to a DDoS attack in 2015?

Tor users could be targeted by police next year as governments seek to combat crime and reduce political dissent, according to a researcher at the security firm Cloudmark. Andrew Conway claimed the anonymity network is “reasonably fragile”, with police able to unmask service providers by comparing traffic spikes, generated by distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, from just a small number of endpoints. He added that the network was at risk of a complete shutdown if a government decided to launch a massive DDoS attack against it, which would overload the system with traffic. Conway said: “There are only a few thousand endpoints where Tor connects to the rest of the internet. Attacking those with a DDoS is well within the capability of many organisations and states.” “I think some oppressive regimes may decide that they have had enough of their dissidents using it and just want to shut the thing down, or some group in law enforcement may decide the same.” The security of Tor was called into question when the FBI arrested Blake ‘Defcon’ Benthall in November for his alleged work on the second iteration of Silk Road, an ecommerce site specialising in contraband that could only be accessed through Tor. Conway added that the police mole planted in the second Silk Road admin team was “probably” involved in the arrests that caused the first version’s collapse, and that he suspected they had used the DDoS and endpoint approach to monitor network traffic. Despite this, he said police are still unable to track down Tor user’s IP addresses, which would be necessary to identify those purchasing contraband online. “[Tor] still does give a level of anonymity for people looking for child pornography, but not if they are providing it,” he said. Source: http://www.cbronline.com/news/security/could-tor-fall-victim-to-a-ddos-attack-in-2015-4468576

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Could Tor fall victim to a DDoS attack in 2015?