Monthly Archives: March 2015

DDoS attacks losing companies business opportunities

Research said organisations fear losing contracts and ongoing business as a consequence Research by Kaspersky has revealed businesses  fear losing clients as a result of DDoS attacks, although the construction industry is more concerned about the cost of eradicating threats. A survey conducted by the security firm in partnership with B2B International revealed 26 per cent of companies  thought the problems caused by such attacks were long-term, meaning they could lose current or prospective clients as a result. 23 per cent said they were concerned a DDoS attack would cause reputational issues, while 19 per cent thought the risk of losing current customers who were not able to access services as a result of an outage was the biggest threat to business . The research revealed that only 37 per cent of the companies surveyed had measures already in place to protect against DDoS attacks. Evgeny Vigovsky, head of Kaspersky DDoS Protection at Kaspersky said: “ People who have not yet faced a particular threat often tend to underestimate it while those who have already experienced it understand which consequences might be the most damaging for them. “However, it makes little sense to wait until the worst happens before acting – this can cost companies a lot, and not only in financial terms. That is why it is important to evaluate all possible risks in advance and take appropriate measures to protect against DDoS attacks.” Of those surveyed, the majority of telecoms, e-commerce, utilities, utilities and industrial companies viewed the loss of business as the main DDoS risk, while construction and engineering verticals explained they were concerned about the cost of implementing  backup systems most. Source: http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/24245/ddos-attacks-losing-companies-business-opportunities

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DDoS attacks losing companies business opportunities

Anonymous to BBC: Bring back Clarkson, threatens DDoS attack

The recent story involving our favorite power-mad petrol head Jeremy Clarkson’s suspension from the BBC has us all on the edge of our seats, as this latest controversy not only puts his future on Top Gear on shaky ground, but jeopardizes the show’s future in general. Many people have shown him support, from an online petition to British Prime Minister David Cameron saying he’s a fan. Clarkson’s got friends in high places, it seems, but according to a report, he’s got friends in low places, too. To recap how this all started, Clarkson allegedly threw a punch at a Top Gear producer during a “fracas” over not being served the dinner he wanted after a long day’s shoot. This has resulted in his suspension from the BBC along with the final three episodes of the show postponed indefinitely. Among the buzz of supporters, The Mirror is reporting that the activist group Anonymous has threatened the BBC with a DDoS attack if Clarkson isn’t reinstated. This kind of internet attack overwhelms a website with traffic requests, effectively shutting it down. The report claims that an open letter to the BBC made these claims, branding the hacker mission as #OpBringBackClarkson saying “You don’t wanna piss off 300 million people…” and “BBC you are warned… DDOS cannons will fire if you don’t comply.” Sounds like Ol’ Clarkson has the might of internet justice behind him, doesn’t it? A closer look tells a slightly different story. First off, there’s hardly an official source for a group called Anonymous for the obvious reasons, so its hard to peg for sure when someone is speaking on the organization’s behalf. Usually, associated twitter accounts like @YourAnonNews, which has over a million followers, indicate what’s trending amongst the cabal, and #OpBringBackClarkson really isn’t up there. Like, at all. As of this writing, eleven people have used the hashtag on twitter. Eleven. Looking at many of the Anonymous-branded twitter accounts and websites reveal that their uproar is more focused on things like the recent Ferguson protests and other serious issues of violence across the globe. Nobody is really talking about their favorite car show host. The Mirror’s article posts what seems to be the one Anonymous-related twitter post regarding the incident, but its handful of followers and tweets, in comparison to sources like @AnonyOps make it seem like an Anonymous fan rather than the voice of a movement. Surely then, this “open letter” would have more information? It might if you can find it. For all this talk of an open letter, any searches and stories posted simply refer back to the original Mirror article, with no links going to the BBC-directed open letter. In fact, after searching for hours, the only way we found it was to tweet the author of the post himself, who shared with us this link: http://pastebin.com/Kau1eP6N The letter doesn’t say much else beyond what we quoted above, save for linking to the Change.org petition and the recanting of Anonymous “we are legion” maxim. Pastebin is a great way to anonymously post text, but it doesn’t really work as an open letter forum unless you get the word out, and none of the Anonymous people are doing that, just The Mirror. We’re wondering if the BBC has even seen this. Again, the tricky thing about dealing with a group called Anonymous is, well, they’re anonymous. We’re not suggesting that this threat is false, but the evidence indicating that it might be is sketchy at best. Source: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/anonymous-to-ddos-attack-the-bbc-site-over-clarkson/

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Anonymous to BBC: Bring back Clarkson, threatens DDoS attack

Bitcoin Mining Pools Targeted in Wave of DDOS Attacks

AntPool, BW.com , NiceHash, CKPool and GHash.io are among a number of bitcoin mining pools and operations that have been hit by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in recent days. The incidents appear to have begun in the first week of March. For example, on 11th March, AntPool owner Bitmain sent an email to customers disclosing the DDoS attacks and advising external pool users to set up failsafe pools in the event of an outage. According to many of the companies affected by the incidents, those behind the attacks demanded payment in bitcoin in return for stopping the attacks. BW.com alerted customers via its official blog to possible service disruptions owing to oattacks, but did not say whether or not a ransom notice had been sent. Other pools took to Bitcoin Talk to warn users about the DDOS attacks. GHash.io operator CEX.io suggested that affected pools are seeing escalating DDoS threats, and said that the source of recent attacks on its pool came with increasing ransom demands. A spokesperson for CEX.io told CoinDesk: “The attack has been conducted by a hacker who has already DDoSed CEX.IO in October, 2014. Previously, he demanded 2 BTC for stopping the attack. This time, the payment has been raised to 5 to 10 BTC.” At least one other mining pool, NiceHash, also reported sustained DDOS attacks last fall. The alleged source of the DDOS attacks, operating under the name DD4BC, is believed to be behind a number of attacks on digital currency websites and services in the past year. Incidents tied to DD4BC include an attack last year on the digital currency exchange Bitalo that resulted in the posting of a 100 BTC bounty. Following the recent DDOS threats, Bitmain contributed an additional to the bounty. Disruptions likely to continue Affected pools say they have moved to boost in-house defense mechanisms in light of the attacks, but some have warned that future outages may likely occur. Bitmain said that its other services, including the cloud mining platform HashNest, may also be affected in the coming days. Operators that responded to press queries say they have refused to pay the ransoms and will continue keeping their pools open despite the risk of future DDoS attacks. Some of the pools have conceded that resolving the situation will be difficult owing to the capabilities believed to be possessed by the source of the attacks. Bitmain’s Yoshi Goto noted that the attacks appear to be systematic and acknowledged that it remains unclear when the situation will be completely resolved. “It is a cat and mouse game now but we will do our best,” he said. CoinDesk will continue monitoring the developments and post updates as they become available.  Source: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-mining-pools-ddos-attacks/

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Bitcoin Mining Pools Targeted in Wave of DDOS Attacks

CloudFlare launches nameserver DDoS shield

Hosed and hapless hosters to hide from hackers CloudFlare has launched a DNS proxy service it says will help organisations improve DNS resilience by pushing distributed denial of service attacks to the outer edge of its network.…

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CloudFlare launches nameserver DDoS shield

DDoS attack targets Femsplain on International Women’s Day

Feminist blog Femsplain was taken offline earlier today by a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, according to the site’s founder, Amber Gordon. She tells The Verge that the site was offline for roughly three hours before service returned intermittently late Sunday afternoon on the East Coast. The timing seems far from random: today is International Women’s Day. In a tweet, Gordon — best known online as @missambear — shared a screenshot showing the massive influx of traffic from the DDoS attack. Such attacks overwhelm the servers that host websites with a avalanche of requests. According to Gordon, these sorts of attacks are not rare. “We constantly have people attacking us and attempting to bring our website down. It’s unfortunate but the reality of our mission.” She added in comments to The Verge that prior attacks are “never to this severity and I think it’s because it’s International Women’s Day.” Social media accounts taking credit for the attack used the hashtag #internationalwomensday, suggesting the harassment is tied to today’s date. The blog started up late last year as a place for women to discuss topics from online harassment to Gamergate. It has a group of female contributors who publish stories to the site. It also shares reader submissions. Gordon says that “our community is so vocal about supporting us that tons of people were sending messages out on social media to raise awareness that this was happening.” She added, “unfortunately it happened on a day that’s meant to celebrate women.” Source: http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/8/8171269/ddos-attack-targets-femsplain-on-international-womens-day

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DDoS attack targets Femsplain on International Women’s Day

Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo Are Working Together to Stop DDoS Attacks

We may all have different gaming preferences, but we can probably all agree that DDoS attacks suck. Whether it’s the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live that goes down, seeing services get targeted by code junkies for their own selfish entertainment is never nice; at the end of the day, we all just want to enjoy our games – regardless of which platform we’re playing on. We’re pleased to learn that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all in constant communication about how to mitigate the impact of these irritating attacks, then. “I don’t think that it’s great when the PSN goes down,” Xbox chief Phil Spencer told Game Informer magazine. “It doesn’t help me. All it does is put the fear and distrust from any gamer that’s out there, so I look at all of us together as this is our collective opportunity to share what we can about what we’re learning and how things are growing. Those conversations happen, which I think is great.” Slightly muddled sentences aside, we really like what Spencer’s saying here: DDoS attacks are incredibly difficult to defend against, so maybe it’s going to take all three companies working together to prevent them from causing so much damage. There hasn’t been a problem on the PSN for a few months now, so hopefully a few corners have been turned behind closed doors. Source: http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2015/03/sony_microsoft_and_nintendo_are_working_together_to_stop_ddos_attacks

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Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo Are Working Together to Stop DDoS Attacks

China online gambling bust; Korean site orders DDoS attacks on competitor

Authorities in China have broken up an international online gambling operation based in Hunan province. China’s official press agency Xinhua quoted Chinese police saying they’d detained 19 individuals following a two-month investigation. A further eight individuals have been targeted for arrest over their roles in the operation of the Shenbo Sun City website, whose servers were based outside the country. Police said the operation earned a profit of RMB 1.4b (US $$223m) between May 2013 and Oct 2014. Police have frozen approximately 1,000 bank accounts across China containing around RMB 200m. This marks China’s second major bust of 2015, having taken down a similarly large operation in Shandong province in January. Over in South Korea , authorities have arrested two ‘cyber security experts’ accused of targeting an online gambling site with distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. Intriguingly, the hackers were hired by another illegal online gambling operator intent on eliminating his competition. The Korea Times quoted the National Police Agency saying a man named Yang, the owner of an online security company, was paid a hefty KRW 1b (US $911k) since May 2014 to target the online gambling operator’s competitor on multiple occasions. Neither site operator was publicly identified by police. On Sept. 25, Yang reportedly hacked into 12k computers and commanded them to spam the targeted site with messages in order to crash its servers. Yang told police he’d agreed to don the black hat because his legal sources of income were “unstable.” Police are continuing to investigate to determine what other DDOS attacks Yang and his henchman might have launched. Source: http://calvinayre.com/2015/03/03/business/korean-gambling-site-ddos-attack-on-competitor/

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China online gambling bust; Korean site orders DDoS attacks on competitor