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DDoS attacks: Bigger, Badder and Nastier than last year

DDoS bots are evolving, developing immunity to cookie and JavaScript challenges along the way. A raft of next-generation DDoS attacks have marked the first months of 2014, says a new report from Incapsula, which notes that large-scale SYN floods attacks now account for a hefty 51.5 percent of all large-scale attacks. The research – which covers the whole of 2013 and the first two months of 2014 – says that 81 percent of DDoS attacks seen in 2014 are now multi-vectored, with almost one in every three attacks now above 20 Gbps in data volume terms. The analysis – entitled the `2013-2014 DDoS Threat Landscape Report’ – says that application (Layer 7) DDoS attacks are becoming a major headache for IT professionals as this year progresses, with DDoS bot traffic up by 240 percent in the three months to the end of February this year. Interestingly, Incapsula says that 29 per cent of botnets have been seen attacking more than 50 targets a month. The analysis – which is based on 237 network DDoS attacks that exceeded 5 Gbps and targeting Web sites on Incapsula’s network – concludes that DDoS bots are evolving, developing immunity to cookie and JavaScript challenges along the way. In fact, says Incapsula, during the final quarter of 2013, the firm’s research team reported the first encounter with browser-based DDoS bots that were able to bypass both JavaScript and Cookie challenges – the two most common methods of bot filtering. The problem, concludes the report, is that the DDoS attack perpetrators are now looking to raise the stakes even higher by introducing new capabilities, many of which are specifically designed to abuse the weaknesses of traditional anti-DDoS solutions. As a result, in 2014, the research predicts, many IT organisations will need to re-think their security strategies to respond to latest Layer 3-4 and Layer 7 DDoS threats. According to Barry Shteiman, Director of Security Strategy with Imperva, the report exposes advancements in both network and application layers. The most interesting take-out from the report, he says, is that the application DDoS attacks are now originating in botnets. “Last year we wrote extensively about the trend on CMS hacking for industrialised cybercrime where attackers use botnets in order to turn onboard infected machines into botnets and then use those as platforms for network and application attacks,” he said. “For DDoS attacks, it just makes sense. When a hacker has the power of masses with a large botnet, there are great opportunities to disrupt service. When servers are being infected rather than user’s computers, it’s even worse, just because of the bandwidth and computing power that becomes available to the hacker,” he added. Ashley Stephenson, CEO of Corero Network Security, said that it is essential that the governments take a more active role in encouraging private sector organisations to address the issue of DDoS attacks – and to put in place the appropriate plans to deal with these unavoidable security risks to their business and the nation’s financial infrastructure. “As consumers saw in late 2012 and early 2013, in both the US and UK, banks and financial institutions were successfully targeted by attacks which compromised their online services,” he told SCMagazineUK.com . The Corero CEO went on to say that his company believes that mandated controls – like those recently proposed by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) – will drive organisations to take pro-active steps to regaining control of their online presence. “These mandates, at a minimum, offer guidance for financial institutions for appropriate DDoS activity monitoring and adequate incident response planning, this will ultimately lead to the deployment of more effective DDoS defence solutions,” he explained. Source: http://www.scmagazineuk.com/ddos-attacks-bigger-badder-and-nastier-than-last-year/article/342078/

DDoS attacks target online gaming

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are not limited to enterprises; we have recently seen a string of DDoS attacks hitting the gaming industry, says senior engineer at F5 Networks, Martin Walshaw. “The attacks have become more frequent, particularly in the professional gaming scene where large sums of money are available,” explains Walshaw, adding that this presents a fresh concern for competitive gamers, as Internet protocol addresses of individual players, as well as servers, being increasingly targeted. DDoS attacks are designed to make a service unavailable to its intended users, according to Walshaw, they typically target banking sites and credit card payment gateways, but lately there has been a marked increase in attacks targeting gaming sites. “InfoSecurity Magazine reports that in February the number of network time protocol (NTP) amplification attacks increased 371.43%. The average peak DDoS attack volume increased a staggering 807.48%, prompting Prolexic Technologies to issue a high alert threat advisory on NTP amplification DDoS attacks – but it was too late for Wurm and League of Legends.” Walshaw cites a recent article on BBC News, which revealed that Wurm is among the latest games to have been hit, with an attack knocking the multiplayer servers offline for two days between 18 and 20 February. For the developer, this is a major inconvenience, he says, as the main selling point of the game is its multiplayer content – the more prolonged the attack, the more damage it does to the brand. “For most gamers, these attacks are frustrating and inconvenient. Wurm’s creators were forced to migrate to new servers and offered a bounty of €10 000 for information that would lead to the perpetrator/s. Also in February, the League of Legends site suffered two DDoS attacks in 24 hours, described as the “biggest [attack] of its kind” against the game since its inception.” However, notes Walshaw, in electronic sports competitions, which offer professional gamers considerable sums of money in tournaments, DDoS attacks are more than just an inconvenience; they can have a significant impact on the results of a game. Last year, several rounds of a popular DOTA 2 tournament had to be postponed after persistent DDoS attacks in qualifying rounds. In competitions where reactions delayed by a fraction of a second can result in failure and lost funds, a slow connection can be a serious issue. “DDoS attacks are increasingly prevalent and show no signs of losing popularity with cyber criminals. Experts expect these enormous volumetric attacks will gain popularity due to the fact that they leverage existing DNS servers on the Internet – there is no need to recruit one’s own botnet, or even rent one,” he states. “Large cyber-attacks are capable of knocking out business-critical applications that generate revenue and facilitate communications, which can have severe business impacts. Organisations that depend on their online presence for survival absolutely need to invest in security solutions that protect themselves, staff, customers and end-users against these attack vectors.” According to John Grady, research manager for security products at IDC, DDoS attack methods have become much stealthier and are increasing in frequency, volume and application specificity. To ensure protection against these threats, he urges organisations to consider a defence-in-depth posture for DDoS defence. Grady adds that one important component is the on-premises appliance, key in detecting and mitigating advanced application, SSL and volumetric attacks. “Whether these kinds of DDoS attacks are the work of mischief makers, sore losers or even attempts to sabotage rivals, is unclear. What is clear is that defending against DDoS attacks is not just the province of private and public sector businesses,” observes Walshaw. He concludes that these attacks have become more prevalent and have amplified over the last year; we can expect to see a lot more of them, with even greater power, across different sectors, throughout this year. Source: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=111708:DDoS-attacks-target-online-gaming&catid=218

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DDoS attacks target online gaming

How a website flaw turned 22,000 visitors into a botnet of DDoS zombies

Researchers have uncovered a recent denial-of-service attack that employed an unusual, if not unprecedented, technique to surreptitiously cause thousands of everyday Internet users to bombard the target with a massive amount of junk traffic. The attack worked by exploiting a Web application vulnerability on one of the biggest and most popular video sites on the Web, according to a blog post published recently by researchers at security firm Incapsula, which declined to identify the site by name. Malicious JavaScript embedded inside the image icons of accounts created by the attackers caused anyone viewing the users’ posts to run attack code that instructed their browser to send one Web request per second to the DoS victim. In all, the technique caused 22,000 ordinary Web users to unwittingly flood the target with 20 million GET requests. “Obviously one request per second is not a lot,” Incapsula researchers Ronen Atias and Ofer Gayer wrote. “However, when dealing with video content of 10, 20, and 30 minutes in length, and with thousands of views every minute, the attack can quickly become very large and extremely dangerous. Knowing this, the offender strategically posted comments on popular videos, effectively created a self-sustaining botnet comprising tens of thousands of hijacked browsers, operated by unsuspecting human visitors who were only there to watch a few funny cat videos.” The novel attack was made possible by the presence of a persistent cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability in the video site, which Incapsula didn’t identify except to say it fell in the Alexa top 50 list. XSS exploits effectively allow attackers to store malicious JavaScript on a website that gets invoked each time someone visits. The booby-trapped user icons contained an iframe tag that pulled malicious instructions off an attacker-controlled command and control server. The malicious instructions caused browsers to surreptitiously flood the DDoS target with an unusually high number of GET requests. Incapsula was able to mitigate the effects of the attack using a combination of progressive challenges and behavior-based security algorithms. Remember the Samy Worm? The attack is only the latest to harness the tremendous power of XSS vulnerabilities. The technique came into vogue in 2005 with the advent of the Samy worm. Named after its creator, a hacker named Samy Kamkar, the XSS exploit knocked MySpace out of commission for a day by forcing anyone who viewed his profile to become a MySpace friend. In less than 24 hours, Kamkar, who later served time in jail for the stunt, gained more than one million followers. “The nature and beauty of persistent XSS is that the attacker doesn’t need to target specific users,” Matt Johansen, senior manager of Whitehat Security’s threat research center, told Ars. “The malicious JavaScript is stored on the website and replayed to anybody who visits this in the future. This particular JavaScript forced each browser that was running it to make a request in one-second intervals.” Last year, Johansen and other colleagues from Whitehat Security demonstrated a proof-of-concept ad network that created a browser-based botnet using a technique that’s similar to the one Incapsula observed exploiting the XSS weakness. “The delivery mechanism [in the Incapsula-observed attack] was different as it was from persistent XSS in the site instead of an ad network,” Johansen explained. “The only difference there was how the malicious JavaScript was rendered in the user’s (bot’s) browser. The code that is quoted in the [Incapsula] article is using a very similar technique to the code we wrote for our talk. Instead of using (image) tags like we did, this attacker is using tags which then make one request per second. We were just loading as many images as possible in the time our JavaScript was running.” Incapsula’s discovery comes three months after criminals were observed using another novel technique to drastically amplify the volume of DDoS attacks on online game services and other websites. Rather than directly flooding the targeted services with torrents of data, an attack group sent much smaller sized data requests to time-synchronization servers running the Network Time Protocol. By manipulating the requests to make them appear as if they originated from one of the gaming sites, the attackers were able to vastly increase the firepower at their disposal. The technique abusing the Network Time Protocol can result in as much as a 58-fold increase or more. Miscreants have long exploited unsecured domain name system servers available online to similarly amplify the amount of junk traffic available in DDoS attacks. Incapsula’s finding underscores the constantly evolving nature of online attacks. It also demonstrates how a single weakness on one party’s website can have powerful consequences for the Internet at large, even for those who don’t visit or otherwise interact with the buggy application. Source: http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/04/how-a-website-flaw-turned-22000-visitors-into-a-botnet-of-ddos-zombies/

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How a website flaw turned 22,000 visitors into a botnet of DDoS zombies

Media hacking continues as Czech news sites suffer DDoS attacks

Media websites continue to be attacked by cyber criminals with reports now emerging that titles in the Czech Republic have been targeted. Three of the country’s most widely-read sites – ihned.cz, idnes.cz, and novinky.cz – have confirmed the slowing or crashing of their web pages according to Reuters, though it is not clear who is responsible for the hacks at present. Indicating the use of commonly-deployed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, Lucie Tvaruzkova, the head of business daily ihned.cz, said, “We are receiving great numbers of requests at our servers, which is a typical way to attack.” The incident follows other well-documented cyber-assaults on major media outlets this year, with both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal revealing their networks were breached in attacks they believed originated in China. Elsewhere, security researchers said last week that hackers have been targeting government agencies across a number of European countries, including the Czech Republic, Ireland, and Romania. A flaw in Adobe Systems ADBE.O software has apparently been exploited in the attacks. Source: http://www.itproportal.com/2013/03/04/media-hacking-continues-as-czech-news-sites-suffer-ddos-attacks/#ixzz2yBakJKEu

Millions of home routers expose ISPs to DDoS attacks

DNS software specialist Nominum has revealed that DNS-based DDoS amplification attacks have significantly increased in the recent months, targeting vulnerable home routers worldwide. The research reveals that more than 24 million home routers have open DNS proxies which potentially expose ISPs to DNS-based DDoS attacks. In February of this year more than 5 million of these routers were used to generate attack traffic. DNS is the most popular protocol for launching amplification attacks and during an attack in January more than 70 percent of total DNS traffic on one provider’s network was associated with amplification. The attraction for the attacker is that DNS amplification requires little skill or effort but can cause major damage. Using home routers helps mask the attack target making it harder for ISPs to trace the ultimate recipient of the waves of amplified traffic. The amount of amplified traffic can amount to trillions of bytes every day, disrupting networks, websites and individuals and leading to additional costs. “Existing in-place DDoS defenses do not work against today’s amplification attacks, which can be launched by any criminal who wants to achieve maximum damage with minimum effort,” says Sanjay Kapoor, CMO and SVP of Strategy at Nominum. “Even if ISPs employ best practices to protect their networks, they can still become victims, thanks to the inherent vulnerability in open DNS proxies”. To address the gap in defenses Nominum has launched its Vantio ThreatAvert product to enable ISPs to neutralize attack traffic. Kapoor says, “ISPs today need more effective protections built-in to DNS servers. Modern DNS servers can precisely target attack traffic without impacting any legitimate DNS traffic. ThreatAvert combined with ‘best in class’ GIX portfolio overcomes gaps in DDoS defenses, enabling ISPs to constantly adapt as attackers change their exploits, and precision policies surgically remove malicious traffic”. Source: http://betanews.com/2014/04/02/millions-of-home-routers-expose-isps-to-ddos-attacks/

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Millions of home routers expose ISPs to DDoS attacks

Blizzard games still suffering after DDoS attack

Blizzard has confirmed that some of its games are being affected by distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS attacks) on its European online services. Diablo , World of Warcraft , StarCraft and Hearthstone may all be affected by the attacks, suffering disconnections and high latency — a longer gap between the time when you click or press a button and the effect of that action, which makes the game can feel laggy. According to Blizzard’s official update, the attacks aren’t focusing on the company’s infrastructure, however the ripples of the DDoS attacks are still being felt by some of the playerbase. The issue may also be causing problems with the Blizzard authentication servers, which in turn leads to failed or slow login attempts. The company stated: “while we are closely monitoring the situation we wanted to thank you for your patience and apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.” On a lighter note, here’s the trailer for Blizzard’s new game Outcasts: Vengeance of the Vanquished . Blizzard Outcasts — Vengeance of the VanquishedBlizzard Entertainment What with it being an April Fool’s Day joke (despite Blizzard’s protestation that they “have no idea why you would doubt us, but yes, we are indeed making this game. For realsies.”) the game is unlikely to be affected by disconnections and latency. Silver linings and all that… Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/01/blizzard-ddos

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Blizzard games still suffering after DDoS attack

DDoS Trends Report Reveals Spike in Botnet Activity

A new study documenting distributed denial of service (DDoS) trends found an average of more than twelve million unique botnet-driven DDoS attacks are occurring weekly in the last 90 days, representing a 240% increase over the same period in 2013. “Unlike network DDoS attacks, Layer 7 attack sources can’t hide behind spoofed IPs. Instead they resort to using Trojan infected computers, hijacked hosting environments and Internet-connected devices,” the report stated “Large groups of such compromised resources constitute a botnet; a remotely controlled “zombie army” that can be used for DDoS attacks and other malicious activities.” Key findings on network (Layer 3 & 4) DDoS attacks included: Large SYN Floods account for 51.5% of all large-scale attacks Almost one in every three attacks is above 20Gbps 81% of attacks are multi-vector threats Normal SYN flood & Large SYN flood combo is the most popular multi-vector attack (75%) NTP reflection was the most common large-scale attack method in February 2014 Key findings on application (Layer 7) DDoS attacks included: DDoS bot traffic is up by 240% More than 25% of all Botnets are located in India, China and Iran USA is ranked number 5 in the list of “Top 10” attacking countries 29% of Botnets attack more than 50 targets a month 29.9% of DDoS bots can hold cookies 46% of all spoofed user-agents are fake Baidu Bots (while 11.7% are fake Googlebots) “2013 was a game-changing year for DDoS attacks, with higher-than-ever attack volumes and rapid evolution of new attack methods,” the report states. “Now, the perpetrators are looking to raise the stakes even higher by introducing new capabilities, many of which are specifically designed to abuse the weaknesses of traditional anti-DDoS solutions. As a result, in 2014, many IT organizations will need to re-think their security strategies to respond to latest Layer 3-4 and Layer 7 DDoS threats.” Source: http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/top-security-stories/ddos-trends-report-reveals-spike-botnet-activity/

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DDoS Trends Report Reveals Spike in Botnet Activity

Anonymous DDoS Attack Hits Albuquerque Police Dept. In Response To Homeless Man James Boyd’s ‘Murder’

Anonymous has followed through with a threat to disable the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) website in retaliation for the fatal shooting of mentally ill man James Boyd earlier this month. An APD spokesperson said there was “unusual activity” on their website and an officer confirmed it was from a cyber-attack. Anonymous often uses distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to shut down websites in protest. A DDoS attack is a flood of exponentially more requests to a targeted website than that sites server can handle, sometimes by using bots and other tools. That overloads the server and makes the website unavailable. The incident in question involves the fatal shooting of Boyd, a 38-year-old homeless and possibly schizophrenic man, after a three-hour encounter in the “foothills” outside Albuquerque. Boyd had a history of violent crimes and often said he was on secret missions under the direction of former President Gerald Ford. Some of Boyd’s violent arrests involved attacks against police officers. He served time in jail and in at least one mental health facility. In a rare move, the APD released the full video of the incident, which shows officers shooting Boyd with beanbags and bullets after Boyd threatened them with a knife multiple times and refused to follow their directives. You can watch the APD briefing on the incident here. Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden says the shooting was justified. The Anon Press released this video on March 25 outlining their disapproval of the APD and planned attack: “On March 30th we are asking the citizens of Albuquerque to occupy the APD HQ and occupy the sites of the Albuquerque Police Department. Let them know that your city is not a place for war games against the homeless and the less fortunate. Anonymous grab your cannons and aim them at Albuquerque police websites.” They also accuse the APD of murdering James Boyd “in cold blood.” The APD says they took measures to defend themselves against the attack but they were not effective. The main APD site that Anonymous targeted is back up as of 6 p.m. on March 30. Another which appears to be a recruitment page, remains unavailable. Federal investigators are now looking into the James Boyd incident, APD Chief Gordon welcomes the probe. Source: http://www.ibtimes.com/anonymous-ddos-attack-hits-albuquerque-police-dept-response-homeless-man-james-boyds-murder-1564905

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Anonymous DDoS Attack Hits Albuquerque Police Dept. In Response To Homeless Man James Boyd’s ‘Murder’

Cisco patches six holes to stop DoS attacks

Cisco has released patches for six flaws in its Internetwork Operating System (IOS) which could be used as part of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. The update features five fixes for its IOS Software and a single patch for its Cisco 7600 Series Route Switch Processor 720 with 10 Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. The company said that the vulnerabilities are serious as they could be used to mount DoS attacks on its customers. It advises Systems Administrators to use the Cisco IOS Software Checker to determine if a given release is exposed to a Cisco product vulnerability. Not exploited yet So far there is no evidence that the vulnerabilities are being exploited, but any flaws that serious in Cisco’s IOS are made more significant because of the amount of control the software has over the market. IOS is a widely used network infrastructure and is working on millions of systems, ranging from the small home office router to the core systems of the world’s largest service provider networks. DoS attacks are the weapon of choice of hacktivists, though other groups have begun experimenting with it. Leaked PRISM documents proved a secret spy unit linked to the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had mounted DoS attacks against the Anonymous collective earlier in February. Cisco boasts that it is the most widely used network infrastructure software in the world. You can see details of the flaws and the patches at the Cisco site here. Source: http://www.techradar.com/news/networking/lan/cisco-patches-six-holes-to-stop-dos-attacks-1237692

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Cisco patches six holes to stop DoS attacks

When ZOMBIES attack: DDoS traffic triples as 20Gbps becomes the new normal

Junk traffic mostly floods in from botnets DDoS traffic has more than trebled since the start of 2013, according to a new study released on Thursday that fingers zombie networks as the primary source of junk traffic that can be used to flood websites.…

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When ZOMBIES attack: DDoS traffic triples as 20Gbps becomes the new normal