Whitehouse.gov down? A software engineer is calling on netizens opposed to Donald Trump to visit the Whitehouse.gov site and overload it with traffic tomorrow.…
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Trump inauguration DDoS protest is ‘illegal’, warn securobods
Monthly Archives: January 2017
2017 may be crisis year for DDoS attacks, warns Deloitte
The proliferation of IoT devices and IoT exploit kits may make 2017 a turning point in DDoS attacks requiring new defence tactics, warns Deloitte Organisations have generally been able to keep pace with the increasing size, frequency and impact of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, but that may change in 2017, Deloitte has warned. DDoS is not a new topic, but the potential scale of the problem in 2017 is, according to the latest Technology, media and telecommunications predictions report from Deloitte. The size of DDoS attacks increased by an average of 30% a year from 2013 to 2015, but 2016 saw the first two attacks of one terabit per second (Tbps) or more, and Deloitte predicts that trend will continue in 2017. According to the report, 2017 will see an average of one attack a month reaching at least 1Tbps in size, with the number of DDoS attacks for the year expected to reach 10 million. Deloitte predicts an average attack size of 1.25Gbps to 1.5Gbps, and the report points out that an unmitigated attack in this size range would be sufficient to take many organisations offline. The anticipated escalation is due to three concurrent trends, the report said. First, the growing installed base of insecure internet of things (IoT) devices that are usually easier to incorporate into botnets than PCs, smartphones and tablets. Second, the online availability of malware methodologies such as Mirai, which allow relatively unskilled attackers to corral insecure IoT devices and use them to launch attacks. Third, the availability of ever-higher bandwidth speeds, which means that each compromised device can send a lot more junk data. The report warns that the consequence of the growth of IoT devices alone could mean that content distribution networks (CDNs) and local mitigations may not be able to scale readily to mitigate the impact of concurrent large-scale attacks, requiring a new approach to tackling DDoS attacks. Phill Everson, head of cyber risk services, Deloitte UK, said a DDoS attack aims to make a website or connected device inaccessible. “DDoS attacks are the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of fake customers converging on a traditional shop at the same time. The shop struggles to identify genuine customers and quickly becomes overwhelmed. The consequence could see an online commerce site temporarily unable to transact, or a government site not able to process tax returns,” he said. Everson said the expected volume and scale of DDoS attacks in 2017 would challenge the defences of most organisations, regardless of size. “Businesses of all sizes should acknowledge the growing DDoS threat and consider how best to handle attacks of these magnitudes,” he said. Any organisation that is increasing its dependence on the internet should be aware of a potential spike in the impact of such attacks, according to the report. The entities that should remain alert include, but are not limited to, retailers with a high share of online revenues, online video game companies, video streaming services, online business and service delivery companies such as financial services firms, and government online services, the report said. “Some organisations may have become a little blasé about DDoS attacks, however these attacks are likely to increase in intensity in 2017 and beyond, and the attackers are likely to become more inventive. Unfortunately, it may never be possible to relax about DDoS attacks,” authors of the report said. Deloitte recommends that companies and governments should consider a range of options to mitigate the impact of DDoS attacks, such as decentralising critical functions like cloud computing, leasing a larger bandwidth capacity than they need, proactively identifying weaknesses and vulnerabilities related to DDoS attacks, developing agile defence techniques, and introducing granular traffic filtering capabilities. Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450411183/2017-may-be-crisis-year-for-DDoS-attacks-warns-Deloitte
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2017 may be crisis year for DDoS attacks, warns Deloitte
Can a DDoS attack on Whitehouse.gov be a valid protest?
A software engineer wants to take down the Whitehouse.gov site to oppose Trump’s inauguration When Donald Trump is inaugurated as the U.S. President on Friday, Juan Soberanis intends to protest the event — digitally. His San Francisco-based protest platform is calling on Americans to oppose Trump’s presidency by visiting the Whitehouse.gov site and overloading it with too much traffic. In effect, he’s proposing a distributed denial-of-service attack, an illegal act under federal law. But Soberanis doesn’t see it that way. “It’s the equivalent of someone marching on Washington, D.C,” he said on Monday. “Civil disobedience has been part of the American democratic process.” Soberanis’s call to action is raising eyebrows and highlights the isssue of whether DDoS attacks should be made a legitimate form of protest. Under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, sending a command to a protected computer with the intent to cause damage can be judged a criminal offense. But that hasn’t stopped hacktivists and cyber criminals from using DDoS attacks to force websites offline. In 2013, the U.S. charged 13 people affiliated with the hacktivist group Anonymous for launching DDoS attacks on government entities, trade groups and law firms. Typically, hackers launch such attacks by using several servers, or huge numbers of infected PCs called botnets, to flood their targets with an overwhelming amount of traffic. Soberanis’s protest effort is simpler. He’s hoping that millions of individuals join his protest by visiting Whitehouse.gov and continually refreshing the page. “There’s nothing illegal,” he said. “We are just a large group of people, making a GET request,” he said, referring to the HTTP request method to access a web page. Soberanis, who works as a software engineer, created his Protester.io platform about a month ago to encourage activism. It currently has no funding, but the site managed to gain a bit of buzz last week. The PR Newswire public-relations service circulated a press release from Protestor.io, only to retract it later after realizing the release was calling for a “take down” of Whitehouse.gov. “There’s also been some detractors,” he said. “They support Trump and have a very different viewpoint.” Soberanis isn’t the first to argue that DDoSing can be a form of legitimate protest. Briefly in 2013, a failed online petition was posted on the White House’s website about the same subject. It argued that DDoSing a website was not a form of hacking, but a new way for protesting. “Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website,” the petition said. Some agree and think that DDoS attacks, in certain scenarios, can work as a valid form of protest. Laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act are “over broad” and “chilling” political speech, said Molly Sauter, author of The Coming Swarm, a book that examines DDoS attacks used in activism. A DDoS attack on Whitehouse.gov — a site designed more for public relations than for operations – also wouldn’t disrupt any major government activities, Sauter said. Taking it down could be seen as “more or less like protesting outside on the street,” she said. “Now, is that going to be successful?” she asked. “Frankly, it’s not likely that the Whitehouse.gov site wouldn’t have DDoS protection.” But others think a DDoS attack on the Whitehouse.gov is still a crime. Making it legal would open a can of worms, they say. “If they can do this to Whitehouse.gov with impunity now, can they also do it to Exxon without worry of legal troubles?” said Mark Sauter (no relation to Molly Sauter), a former U.S. Army officer who consults security and tech companies. He questions why protestors like Soberanis are resorting to DDoS attacks when they can publish their own websites or speech against Trump. Source: http://www.csoonline.com/article/3158826/security/can-a-ddos-attack-on-whitehousegov-be-a-valid-protest.html
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Can a DDoS attack on Whitehouse.gov be a valid protest?
DDoS prevention as part of a robust I.T. Strategy
A decade ago the idea of loss prevention (LP) had been limited to the idea of theft of merchandise. With the advent of online retailing, retailers have discovered that loss must be viewed more broadly to “intended sales income that was not and cannot be realized” [Beck and Peacock, 28]. While Beck and Peacock regard malicious loses such as vandalism as part of sales that cannot be realized, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks certainly could fit with that definition. Unlike other kinds of LP, where the attempt of the thief is to conceal their activities, a DDoS attack is designed for maximal visibility so the purpose of the attack is to deny the target customer’s access, and especially susceptible are businesses that have online payment gateways [Gordon, 20] which today includes many business and non-profit entities. Particularly problematic for CIOs is that the nature of DDoS attacks is constantly changing. Many of these attacks occur at networking layers below the application level, which means for the CIO that buying an off-the-shelf software product is unlikely to provide an effective countermeasure [Oliveira et al, 19]. Of course, the determination of financial impact is an important consideration when weighing allocations of the IT security budget. While it is clear that the “loss of use and functionality” constitutes true losses to a company [Hovav and D’Arcy, 98], estimating a potential loss encounters difficulties given the lack of historical data and a perceived risk to putting an exact figure upon security breach losses. This presents a problem for the CIO because of the need to show ROI on security investments [Hovav and D’Arcy, 99]. Yet, a successful DDoS attack has the potential to cost a company millions of dollars in real financial losses from the direct costs of work time, equipment leases, and legal costs to the indirect costs, such as, loss of competitive advantage and damage done to the company’s brand. The direct cost of “a more complex breach that affects a cross-section of a complex organization” can often exceed £500,000 (624,000 USD) and does not include additional five or six figure fines if government regulatory agencies are involved [Walker and Krausz, 30]. If the CIO cannot buy an off-the-shelf software product to prepare against a DDoS attack, how does the CIO develop an I.T. security strategy that is appropriate to this specific threat? While this is by no means an exhaustive list: here are a few approaches that one can take that may help to developing an effective I.T. strategy that can deal with the DDoS threat. (1) Accept that developing an I.T. strategy effective against mitigating loss caused by DDoS requires resources, but your business is worth protecting. (2) Remember that the purpose of technology is to connect your business to people [Sharif, 348], and that connectivity is itself an asset that has real value. (3) Developing effective business partners can help you ensure business continuity. These partnerships could be with consultants, alliance partnerships that have successfully dealt with DDoS attacks, or businesses that specialize in dealing with this kind of security issue. Bibliography Beck, Adrian, and Colin Peacock. New Loss Prevention: Redefining Shrinkage Management. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Gordon, Sarah, “DDoS attacks grow,” Network Security (May 2015), 2, 20. Horvav, Anat, and John D’Arcy, “The Impact of Denial-of-Service attack announcements on the market value of firms,” Risk Management and Insurance Review 6 (2003), 97-121. Oliveira, Rui André, Nuno Larajeiro, and Marco Vieira, “Assessing the security of web service frameworks against Denial of Service attacks,” The Journal of Systems and Software 109 (2015), 18-31. Sharif, Amir M. “Realizing the business benefits of enterprise IT,” Handbook of Business Strategy 7 (2006), 347-350. Walker, John, and Michael Krausz, The True Cost of Information Security Breaches: A Business Approach. Cambrigdeshire, UK: IS Governance Publishing, 2013. David A. Falk, , Ph.D. Director of IT DOSarrest Internet Security
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DDoS prevention as part of a robust I.T. Strategy
Protest Aims to ‘Take Down’ WhiteHouse.Gov on Inauguration Day
National PR service circulates—then pulls—release highlighting campaign to crash government website BY: Morgan Chalfant January 14, 2017 4:56 am A leading public-relations service blasted and then removed a news release this week highlighting a campaign to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump by crashing WhiteHouse.gov. PR Newswire, a global news-release distribution service, circulated a release on Thursday highlighting a campaign launched by Protester.io, a digital protest organizing platform, to “take down” the White House website next Friday in protest of Trump’s inauguration. “On January 20th, hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to Washington, DC to march in protest of the inauguration of Donald Trump. Millions more around the country will be joining the cause from home. If you can’t make it to Washington DC on inauguration day, you can still participate by occupying whitehouse.gov online,” the release read. “Why is it important to participate? Isn’t this just another election? We haven’t lost our democracy yet, but it is most definitely under threat. The only way we’re going to defend and revive our democracy is by mobilizing.” Protester.io describes itself as a platform that helps individuals “organize protests like a crowdfunding campaign.” A description of the Inauguration Day protest on its website, named “Occupy WhiteHouse.gov,” instructs interested parties to go to the White House website on Jan. 20 and refresh the page as often as possible throughout the day. The page also includes instructions for protesters to “automate” page refresh so that their computers do this automatically. “When enough people occupy www.WhiteHouse.gov the site will go down. Please join us and stand up against this demagogue who is threatening our democracy and our security,” the protest page states. Shortly after blasting the news release, PR Newswire issued a correction, changing the headline of the release from “Protester.io Launches Campaign to Take Down WhiteHouse.gov on Inauguration Day” to “Protester.io Launches Campaign to Voice Your Opinion at WhiteHouse.gov on Inauguration Day.” Later, the news-release service removed the press release entirely. PR Newswire was purchased by Cision, a global public relations software company based in Chicago, for $841 million from British business events organizer UBM in 2015. PR Newswire is based in New York and distributes public relations messages for companies largely located in the United States and Canada, according to the New York Times. When contacted, a spokesman for Cision confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon that the original release had been modified and later removed entirely “after further evaluation.” “The issuer modified the original release at our request, but after further evaluation, we ultimately decided to remove the release in its entirety and have requested that the rest of our network remove the content as well,” Stacey Miller, director of communication for Cision, wrote in an email Friday afternoon. An organizer for the protest did not respond to a request for comment. Federal investigators have probed what are called distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks, which block users from websites by overloading them with traffic. Such attacks brought down Twitter, Spotify, and Amazon last October, prompting investigations by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. It is unclear whether the planned “Occupy WhiteHouse.gov” protest campaign would constitute a DDoS attack. Attempts to reach the FBI on Friday were unsuccessful. Several protests have been organized around Inauguration Day, including the “Women’s March on Washington” that is expected to draw some 200,000 women to the nation’s capital on Jan. 21, the day following Trump’s inauguration. Fox News reported that protesters are also planning to blockade security checkpoints at the inauguration and organize a “dance party” outside the home of Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Source: http://freebeacon.com/culture/protest-aims-take-whitehouse-gov-inauguration-day/
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Protest Aims to ‘Take Down’ WhiteHouse.Gov on Inauguration Day
DDOS attacks intensify in EMEA
Distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region witnessed an uptick in the last quarter and are set to intensify in 2017. This is according to a report issued by F5 Networks, which revealed data from its Security Operations Centre (SOC), highlighting the growing scale and intensity of cyber attacks in the region. DDOS attacks have been around since at least 2000. These attacks refer to a situation in which many compromised machines flood a target with requests for information. The target can’t handle the onslaught of requests, so it crashes. Consultancy firm Deloitte also expects cyber attacks to enter the terabit era in 2017, with DDOS attacks becoming larger in scale, harder to mitigate and more frequent. F5 Networks points out that in 2016 to date, it has handled and mitigated 8 536 DDOS instances. The company notes that one of the attacks featured among the largest globally – a 448Gbps user datagram protocol (UDM) and Internet control message protocol (ICMP) fragmentation flood using over 100 000 IP addresses emanating from multiple regions. It explains the incident highlights a growing trend for global co-ordination to achieve maximum impact, with IP attack traffic stemming largely from Vietnam (28%), Russia (22%), China (21%), Brazil (15%) and the US (14%). “The EMEA Security Operations Centre has been experiencing rapid growth since launching in September last year, and it is entirely driven by the explosion of attacks across the region, as well as businesses realising they need to prepare for the worst,” says Martin Walshaw, senior engineer at F5 Networks. In Q1 (October – December), the SOC experienced a 100% increase in DDOS customers, compared to the same period last year. F5 Networks says UDP fragmentations were the most commonly observed type of DDOS attack in Q1 (23% of total), followed by domain name system reflections, UDP floods (both 15%), syn floods (13%) and NTP reflections (8%). “Given the rise and variety of new DDOS techniques, it is often unclear if a business is being targeted,” Walshaw says. “This is why it is more important than ever to ensure traffic is being constantly monitored for irregularities and that organisations have the measures in place to react rapidly. “The best way forward is to deploy a multi-layered DDOS strategy that can defend applications, data and networks. This allows detection of attacks and automatic action, shifting scrubbing duties from on-premises to cloud and back when business disruption from local or external sources is imminent at both the application and network layer.” Source: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=158643
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DDOS attacks intensify in EMEA
Three ways retailers can safeguard against cybercrime
Chinese New Year is always a shopping boom time in town. People are generous in spending on food, decorations, and fashion during the important cultural festival. While retailers are focused on ensuring that they successfully take advantage of spikes in online and in-store sales, are they as prepared as they need to be to defend against major distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks? Avoiding a cyber-crime catastrophe Thanksgiving officially kicks off the biggest shopping period of the year globally. The period through to Chinese New Year may be a sales bonanza, but it’s also a period of high vulnerability that criminals exploit to maximize the threat to a retailer’s business. Along with gaming and finance companies, retailers are popular targets because they store sensitive data that thieves can use for financial gain. Additionally, DDOS attacks are often used to distract organizations so that even more costly web application attacks can take place at the same time. But the truth is no industry is immune and the threat is increasing in its relentlessness. With Chinese New Year sales accounting for a sizeable chunk of most retailers’ revenues, from a criminal’s perspective, there could hardly be a better time to launch a cyber attack. What’s more, with systems already creaking under a load of peak volumes, it might not take much of a straw to break the camel’s back. The last thing a retailer wants is for their business to spectacularly and very visibly come to a sudden halt because they can’t defend against and mitigate a major distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Retailers face a growing threat Talk of cyber attacks are more than mere scaremongering – the threat is very real. For example, in September, the release of the Mirai code — a piece of malware that infects IoT devices enabling them to be used for DDoS attacks — opened a Pandora’s box of opportunities for ruthless cyber entrepreneurs who want to disrupt their target markets and exploit the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of companies who honestly serve their customers. This code gives criminals the ability to orchestrate legions of unsecured Internet of Things (IoT) devices to act as unwitting participants in targeted DDoS attacks. These objects could be anything from domestic hubs and routers to printers and digital video recorders — as long as they’re connected to the internet. The latest large DDoS attacks have used botnets just like this — proving that the bad guys are multiplying and, most likely, gearing up for bigger things. Asia is not immune and Hong Kong is a prime target According to a recent report by Nexusguard, DDoS attacks increased 43 percent in Q2 to 34,000 attacks in the Asia-Pacific region and 83 percent worldwide. The largest increase was seen in Hong Kong, where attacks rose an astonishing 57 percent. China, which saw a 50% increase in attacks, is the number one target in the region. According to the report, over the course of a month, a Chinese website was attacked 41 times. The fact is, that every company needs to pay this issue serious attention and put effective plans in place. Prevention is the better than the cure There are no easy answers to the question of how to secure IoT smart devices — especially at the ‘budget conscious’ end of the market. That’s why we expect that these DDoS attacks will continue to proliferate, meaning that targeted DDoS attacks of increasing scale and frequency will almost certainly occur as a result. So how can retailers defend themselves against the threat of an attack? Organizations have to use a combination of measures to safeguard against even the most determined DDoS attack. This include: 1. Limiting the impact of an attack by absorbing DDoS traffic targeted at the application layer, deflecting all DDoS traffic targeted at the network layer and authenticating valid traffic at the network edge 2. Choosing an ISP that connects directly to large carriers and other networks, as well as internet exchanges — allowing traffic to pass efficiently 3. Employing the services of a network-based DDoS provider — with a demonstrable track record of mitigating DDoS attacks and sinking significant data floods. This will safeguard specific IP address ranges that organizations want to protect. Chinese New Year is a critical period for retailers — and hopefully for all the right reasons. But in an increasingly digital world, consideration needs to be given to the IT infrastructure that underpins today’s retail business and the security strategy that protects it. Source: http://www.enterpriseinnovation.net/article/three-ways-retailers-can-safeguard-against-cybercrime-512090779
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Three ways retailers can safeguard against cybercrime
Crims shut off Ukraine power in wide-ranging anniversary hacks
Phishing, denial of service, and remote exploitation part of hacking banquet Hackers of unknown origin cut power supplies in Ukraine for a second time in 12 months as part of wide-ranging attacks that hit the country in December.…
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Crims shut off Ukraine power in wide-ranging anniversary hacks
Dark DDoS: hacker tools and techniques – the challenges faced
In 2017 has the cyber landscape changed? What are the objectives of hackers? What are their methods? The variety of attacks used has increased, so how can you mitigate the risk? Hackers can have many different possible objectives. For instance, they may aim to interrupt business, corrupt data, steal information – or even all of these at the same time. To reach their goals, they continuously look for any vulnerability – and will use any vulnerability – to attack. They’re getting increasingly smarter and always looking for more, faster and easier ways to strike. Furthermore, their attacks are no longer designed simply to deny service but to deny security. The initial service denial attack is often used as a camouflage to mask further – and potentially more sinister – activities. These include data theft, network infiltration, data exfiltration, networks being mapped for vulnerabilities, and a whole host of other potential risks. These types of attacks are often referred to as ‘Dark DDoS’ because of initial smokescreen attack which acts to distract organisations from the real breach that’s taking place. In a large proportion of recent data breaches, DDoS (distributed denial of service attacks) have been occurring simultaneously – as a component of a wider strategy – meaning hackers are utilising this technique in a significant way. According to a report by SurfWatch Labs, DDoS attacks rose 162% in 2016. SurfWatch Labs claims this is due to the increasing use of IoT devices and the attacks on the KrebsOnSecurity.com and on domain name provider, Dyn – believed to be some of the biggest DDoS attacks ever recorded. Last year, France was also hit by one of the largest DDoS attacks when hosting company, OVH, was targeted through 174,000 connected cameras. Today’s hackers have developed a high variety of DNS attacks that fall into three main categories: Volumetric DoS attacks An attempt to overwhelm the DNS server by flooding it with a very high number of requests from one or multiple sources, leading to degradation or unavailability of the service. Stealth/slow drip DoS attacks Low-volume of specific DNS requests causing capacity exhaustion of outgoing query processing, leading to degradation or unavailability of the service. Exploits Attacks exploiting bugs and/or flaws in DNS services, protocol or on operating systems running DNS services. Often DNS threats are geared towards a specific DNS function (cache, recursive & authoritative), with precise damage objectives. This aspect must be integrated into the DNS security strategy to develop an in-depth defence solution, ensuring comprehensive attack protection. The list below of the most common attacks aims to emphasise the diversity of the threats and details the extent of the attack surfaces: Volumetric attacks Direct DNS attacks Flooding of DNS servers with direct requests, causing saturation of cache, recursion or authoritative functions. This attack is usually sent from a spoofed IP address. DNS amplification DNS requests generating an amplified response to overwhelm the victim’s servers with very large traffic. DNS reflection Attacks using numerous distributed open resolver servers on the Internet to flood victim’s authoritative servers (usually combined with amplification attacks). NXDOMAIN Flooding of the DNS servers with non-existing domains requests, implying recursive function saturation. Stealth/slow drip DoS attacks Sloth domain attacks Attacks using queries sent to hacker’s authoritative domain that very slowly answers requests – just before the time out, to cause victim’s recursive server capacity exhaustion. Phantom domain attack Attacks targeting DNS resolvers by sending them sub-domains for which the domain server is unreachable, causing saturation of cache server capacity. Random subdomain attack (RQName) Attacks using random query name, causing saturation of victim’s authoritative domain and recursive server capacity. Exploits Zero-Day vulnerability Zero-day attacks take advantage of DNS security holes for which no solution is currently available. DNS-based exploits Attacks exploiting bugs and/or flaws in DNS services, protocol or on operating systems running DNS services. DNS tunnelling The DNS protocol is used to encapsulate data in order to remotely control malware or/and the exfiltration of data. Protocol anomalies DNS Attacks based on malformed queries, intending to crash the service. DNS cache poisoning Attacks introducing data into a DNS resolver’s cache, causing the name server to return an incorrect IP address and diverting traffic to the attacker’s computer. The DNS landscape security is continuously moving and DNS attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated, combining multiple attack vectors at the same time. Today’s DDoS attacks are almost unrecognisable from the simple volumetric attacks that gave the technique its name. In 2017, they have the power to wreak significant damage – as all those affected by the Dyn breach last year will testify – they are far more sophisticated, deceptive and frequent. To keep ahead of these threats, today’s security solutions must continuously protect against a family of attacks rather than a limited list of predefined attacks that must be frequently updated or tuned. Source: http://www.information-age.com/securing-website-content-management-system-123463910/
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Dark DDoS: hacker tools and techniques – the challenges faced