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UCAS under DDoS attack

Ucas has been the victim of a hacking attempt, when its website was the target of a denial of service attack. The site was unavailable late on 14 August, the day before thousands of A-level students were due to receive their results across the country. A spokesperson for Ucas said: “The UCAS website suffered a sustained, criminal ‘denial of service’ attack. The site was down for an hour and then restored fully. No personal information was compromised. Confirmation and Clearing went ahead as normal. The attack originated in the Asia Pacific region and the police have been informed.” The chief executive of Ucas, Mary Curnock Cook, speaking to the Huffington Post, said staff were ‘pretty upset’ at the attempt. “The incident was contained very, very quickly and no personal data was released to anybody.” As of yesterday evening, over one million students had logged into Track. Ucas placed nearly double the number of students through clearing this year, in comparison with numbers from last year. 7,970 students had found a place through clearing, compared with 4,180 last year. The attempt to wreck the system was stopped, thanks to new technology that Ucas have installed in their software. Cumock Cook said: “This year we have made a step-change in our technology arrangements and most of our critical services are deployed in the cloud, which gives us massive resilience.” Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/student/news/ucas-hacked-ahead-of-alevel-results-8770993.html

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UCAS under DDoS attack

5 Steps to Prepare for a DDOS Attack

As more people are realizing that in today’s cyber climate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are a matter of when, not if, the most common question I get asked is “What can I do to prepare?” I like to break it down into 5 key steps enterprises can take now to be prepared for a future attack: 1. Centralize Data Gathering and Understand Trends This is true across all security topics, but the last thing you want to be is blind when a DDoS attack hits. Generally the DDoS attack timeline goes something like this for the head of network operations: – 9:00 am – your monitoring system starts lighting up like a Christmas tree and your phone is blowing up with SMS alerts saying “the site is down.” – 9:01 am – your CEO calls you screaming “why is the site down?!?!?!?!” Hopefully, you can answer that question, but without proper metrics and data gathering you can’t possibly hope to identify the root cause. It could be a network circuit down, data center failure, DDoS attack, etc. With proper data gathering and monitoring in place, you can quickly identify a DDoS attack as the cause, and you can start the process of getting the website back up and running. It’s critical to identify the cause early as DDoS attacks can be quite complex and the sooner you jump on identification and remediation, the sooner the site will be back up. At minimum, the metrics you should gather include: Inbound and outbound bandwidth on all of your network circuits, peering connections, etc. Server metrics: CPU load, network and disk I/O, memory, etc. Top talkers: top sources and destinations of traffic by IP and port. If you are running a web site, you need to understand items like top URLs being requested (vs. the top URLs usually being requested), top HTTP headers, HTTP vs. HTTPS traffic ratios etc. All of these metrics (and there are many more I didn’t cover) should then be sent to a central logging and correlation system so you can view and compare them from a single viewpoint. This helps you spot trends and quickly identify the sources and method of the attack. This is especially important when it’s a very complex attack where it might not be an obvious issue (e.g. it’s easy to see when your network bandwidth is saturated, but when it’s a botnet simulating clicking the “Add to Cart” button to overwhelm your database resources, that isn’t as easy to spot; especially if you are trying to piece data from many disparate systems). 2. Define a Clear Escalation Path Now that you have determined it really is a DDoS attack, what next? Do you know who to call to get your service back up and running? What tools do you have in place to block the malicious traffic? If you have purchased DDoS protection (very smart!), how do you get the system fired up? These are key questions that should be written down and answered BEFORE the attack hits. During an attack people are rarely calm and it’s no fun trying to figure out an escalation path in the middle of the craziness. Do it before the attack hits so you can calmly execute your plan and get your site back up and running. Note that this doesn’t just mean “technical” contacts. You want to let the head of support and customer service know as well. You can bet customers will be calling in and there is nothing worse than to answer “weird, I didn’t know our site was down” when a customer calls. You also want to let your CEO know (if he or she doesn’t already). Each business is different, so you should consider your situation and think of all the people who might want to know the website is down and add them to the list. An “outages” mailing list is a central place to report these items without you needing to remember who to send the info to every time. If you do have a cloud-based DDoS protection service in place, make sure the group you have chosen internally to be the touch point with the provider has the up to date 24/7 hotline, email address to send capture files to, etc. The vendor should be one of the first calls you make to start the mitigation. You need to engage your mitigation provider immediately as they have done this many times before and will know what to do to get your site back up and running. 3. Use Layered Filtering In the discussion on size vs. complexity of an attack, you need to be able to handle both the “big and dumb” types (a whole lot of requests that are generally easy to spot as malicious – often known as “network level”) and “small and complex” (fewer requests, but extremely difficult to differentiate legitimate vs. malicious – commonly referred as “application level” or “layer 7? attacks). Some tools and techniques work (and scale) very well to mitigate against the “big and dumb” types, but fail miserably on the application attacks. On the other hand, some techniques that are required for application attacks have trouble scaling on the larger network attacks. Recently, we have seen more of a third type of attack, “big and complex!” A combination of the two aforementioned attack types, these are big attacks where the traffic is really hard to identify as malicious or legitimate. With great technology and layered filtering though, you are in a better position to handle any of these types of attacks. 4. Address Application and Configuration Issues Not only are DDoS attacks really good at pinpointing bottlenecks in your network and security infrastructure, they are also amazing at identifying problems in your application; especially when it comes to performance tuning and configuration. If you haven’t done proper application load testing (both before launch and every so often to check for any slowness that may have crept in) a DDoS attack may be the first time your website or application has really been stress-tested. You may find your database configuration is sub-optimal, or your Web server isn’t configured for enough open connections. Whatever the issue, you will quickly see how well you have tuned your website. It’s always a good idea to do load testing of your site on your schedule, not the attackers’. 5. Protect Your Domain Name System (DNS) This is crucial and yet probably the most overlooked of all of the above recommendations. I can’t tell you how many enterprises have spent millions of dollars on their Web hosting infrastructure (data centers, web servers, load balancers, database servers, etc.) but have only two low end DNS servers to handle all of their DNS traffic. DNS is an extremely common target of a DDoS attack due to how critical the service is for Web availability (there are plenty of articles and examples of large Web properties going down due to DNS issues – often attack-related). If a customer can’t resolve the IP address of your website (which is the job of DNS), it doesn’t matter how much you have spent on your hosting, that customer is not getting to your site. Protecting your DNS as part of a good DDOS mitigation strategy is fundamental. (Here’s a report from Gartner Research that discusses this issue. Conclusion It would take a book to cover all of these topics in depth. Hopefully this will at least give you, some things to think about and plan for with your DDoS mitigation strategy. Stay tuned for my next post where I will go in depth on some of the cool technology we use at Verisign to protect both our own and our customers’ infrastructure. Source: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20130731_5_steps_to_prepare_for_a_ddos_attack/

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5 Steps to Prepare for a DDOS Attack

DDoS attacks getting bigger but shorter in duration

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are getting bigger, but their duration are getting shorter, according to an analysis released this week by Arbor Networks. During the first six months of 2013, the average size of DDoS attacks remained solidly over the 2Gbps, Arbor reported — something the company has never seen before. Although the average may have been skewed during the period by the massive attack on Spamhaus in March, which reached 300Gbps at its zenith, large attacks in general have been going up too, Arbor found. From January to June this year, it said attacks exceeding 20Gbps more than doubled over 2012. Several security experts agreed with Arbor’s analysis. Michael Smith, CSIRT director for Akamai Technologies, cited two factors affecting DDoS numbers during the period. “It’s just easier to do these days,” he said in an interview. “You can rent a botnet for $20.” He added that a hacktivist group known as the Izz ad-Dim al-Qassam Cyber Fighters (QCF) has adopted a strategy that is also driving up the raw number of attacks and depressing their duration. “They attack multiple targets during the course of a day,” Smith explained. Not only do they attack multiple sites, but they don’t prolong an attack if they don’t see immediate results. “They’ll move from target to target after 10 or 20 minutes until they find one they can cause an immediate impact on,” Smith noted. Attacks are becoming bigger because hackers have more resources to mount attacks than ever before, said Marc Gaffan, founder of Incapsula. “There’s more ammunition for hackers in the wild which is why attacks have grown in size,” he said. New techniques have also contributed to the size of the attacks. For example, in the Spamhaus attack, hackers exploited openings in DNS servers to amplify the magnitude of their attacks on the website. They do that by sending a request to a server with an open DNS resolver. In the request, they spoof the address of their target so when the server answers the request, it sends its answer to the target. “When the resolver sends back the answer, which is larger than the question, it’s amplifying the attacker’s request,” Gaffan said. “Sometimes the answer can be as much as 50 times larger than the request,” he continued. “So an attack can be 50 times the original firepower used for the request.” In addition to improving their techniques, hackers have also increased their efficiencies by shortening their attacks. They will hit a site long enough to bring it down, disappear into the ether, then return to take it down again just as it’s recovering from the initial attack. “When a website goes down, it takes time to bring it back up,” Gaffan said. “There’s no point continuing to fire at that target when it’s down. You want to conserve your ammunition and fly under the radar, because the more you fire the greater the chances of someone identifying you as the source of the fire.” The technique also allows the attackers to get better mileage from their resources. “They could hit multiple targets with a single piece of infrastructure as opposed to hitting one target for an hour,” Gaffan said. Part of the reason attackers are sharpening their skills of deception is that defenders are getting better at blunting DDoS attacks. “The Internet as a whole is getting better at responding to these attacks,” said Cisco Technical Leader for Threat Research, Craig Williams. “We’ve seen DNS amplification shoot through the roof, but I suspect that’s going to start dropping with the addition of RPZs that can mitigate queries and people getting better at closing down open resolvers,” Williams told CSOonline . Source: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/073113-ddos-attacks-getting-bigger-but-272389.html?page=2

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DDoS attacks getting bigger but shorter in duration

DDoS is Back; 3 Banks Attacked

A week after the self-proclaimed hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters announced plans to launch a fourth phase of attacks against U.S. banks it’s still not clear whether the group has resumed its distributed-denial-of-service activity. DDoS attacks appear to have targeted three banks July 24 through July 27, according to Keynote, an online and mobile cloud testing and traffic monitoring provider, and other sources. But security vendors that track attacks linked to al-Qassam’s botnet, known as Brobot, say they’re uncertain exactly who was behind those attacks. While some attack evidence suggested a link to Brobot, nothing was definitive. The online banking sites of JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bancorp and Regions Financial Corp. all experienced intermittent outages last week, Keynote says, and the outages appear to be DDoS-related. All three banking institutions have previously been targeted by al-Qassam. Those three banks all declined to comment about the outages, although Chase did acknowledge intermittent online issues July 24 on Twitter , in response to customer complaints. Detecting those online glitches, however, took some digging, says Aaron Rudger, Keynote’s Web performance marketing manager. The online traffic patterns were different from what Keynote has recorded in the past for activity believed to be related to DDoS, he says. “Normally with DDoS attacks, we see a ramping decline in a site’s performance as the load against it builds,” Rudger says. “Eventually, the site falls over when overwhelmed.” But in all three online outages tracked last week, that pattern was not present, he says. “It seems they were hit very hard, very fast – so fast, our agents did not observe the typical ‘ramping’ effect of an attack,” he says. The pattern divergence could signal a different type of DDoS approach, or merely be a byproduct of the steps the affected banking institutions were taking to mitigate their outages, or a combination of the two, he says. And while all three banks suffered slightly different types of attacks – Chase hit by DNS lookup errors, U.S. Bank hit by TCP connection errors and Regions hit by traffic that allowed access to its homepage but kept eBanking inaccessible – Rudger says they all were, at least in part, linked to external issues. Bot Activity The outages linked to Chase began during the morning of July 24, stopped and then picked back up in the afternoon, says one DDoS mitigation expert, who asked to remain anonymous. The first wave of attacks had no commands linked to Brobot, but the second wave did, the source says. The outages at U.S. Bank, which began during the very early morning hours of July 24, also stopped for a while and picked back up in the afternoon, Rudger says. And the outages at Regions showed similar patterns, though the outages spanned two days and eBanking remained inaccessible throughout the duration, he adds. John LaCour, CEO of cybersecurity and intelligence firm PhishLabs, declined to comment about any particular banks affected by DDoS activity, but he confirmed that his company had tracked new attacks. He did not say, however, if those attacks were linked to Brobot. Tracking Attacks Several other DDoS mitigation providers would not comment about last week’s three apparent DDoS attacks. But the anonymous source says no one is certain whether al-Qassam is connected to those attacks. After al-Qassam’s announcement that it planned to launch a fourth phase of attacks, copycats may have decided to take advantage, launching attacks of their own hoping to be mistaken as al-Qassam, the source says. The group hasn’t attacked since the first week of May, when it announced it was halting its DDoS strikes in honor of Anonymous’ Operation USA , bringing an end to its third phase of attacks, which began March 5 (see New Wave of DDoS Attacks Launched ). al-Qassam has repeatedly stated it’s waging its attacks against U.S. banking institutions in protest of a Youtube movie trailer deemed offensive to Muslims. “Other DDoS actors have started their hostilities, trying to blame (or at least be confused with) them on QCF,” the source says. “We saw similar activity from the middle of Phase 2 onward, where fraudsters were attacking known [Operation] Ababil targets in order to straphang on the chaos that QCF was bringing.” Several security vendors tracking the group’s Brobot say that the botnet is growing. “The huge number of servers controlled by the attackers shows that this campaign was fully planned, intentionally organized and deliberate,” says Frank Ip, vice president of U.S. operations for NSFOCUS, which tracks DDoS activity. “This leads us to wonder whether the attack campaign is supported or backed by a country or financially well-off organization behind the scenes. We expect that similar DDoS attack events will occur in the wake of the recent activity, employing more diversified and varying methods.” Source: http://www.govinfosecurity.com/ddos-back-3-banks-attacked-a-5951/p-2

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DDoS is Back; 3 Banks Attacked

DDoS: Lessons From U.K. Attacks

While U.S. banking institutions brace for the next wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, new cyberthreat research reminds us that no industry or global market is immune to DDoS. A new study from online security provider Neustar shows that DDoS attacks are up in the United Kingdom, just as they are in the U.S., and they’re targeting everything from e-commerce sites to government. It’s not just banking institutions that DDoS attackers want to take down – a truth we’ve been preaching for several months. But now, data proves it. Of the 381 U.K. organizations polled between May and June by Neustar, 22 percent said they suffered from some type of DDoS attack in 2012. By comparison, a survey of 704 North American organizations released in April 2012 showed that 35 percent had been targeted by DDoS within the last year. While the financial services sector has been the primary DDoS target in the U.S., telecommunications companies are the No. 1 target in the U.K., according to the Neustar survey, with 53 percent reporting attacks. Half of U.K. e-commerce companies and 43 percent of online retailers surveyed reported attacks. But only 17 percent of the U.K. financial-services organizations say they had been targeted, compared with 44 percent in the North American survey. The North American data is a bit out of date, so the percentage of financial institutions hit by DDoS is now probably even higher. And attacks aimed at U.K. organizations have been nowhere as fierce as those waged against U.S. banks since September 2012. More Attacks on Way Now that al-Qassam has just announced plans for a fourth phase of attacks, we’re all bracing for more strikes against U.S. banks (see DDoS: Attackers Announce Phase 4 ). But the new survey sends a clear message: No organization is safe from DDoS. “As in North America, U.K. companies face serious challenges as they decide on DDoS protection and attempt to mitigate losses,” Neustar writes in its survey study. “While many companies are hoping traditional defenses will suffice, given the frequency of attacks, their growing complexity and the impact when sites go dark, such hopes are badly misplaced.” U.K. organizations could learn quite a bit from the example U.S. banks have set. Experts have noted time and time again that European banks and others are not well-prepped for DDoS. Despite the fact that the attacks waged against U.S. banks have been among the largest the industry has ever seen, the percentage of U.S. organizations that experienced extended outages was much smaller than that of U.K. organizations, the surveys showed. The defenses U.S. banking institutions have put in place have set a new bar. We already knew that, but now Neustar’s survey results support it. According to Neustar, while online outages lasting about 24 hours affected about 37 percent of both North American and U.K. organizations surveyed, outages lasting more than a week affected 22 percent in the U.K. and only 13 percent in North America. Having a site down for more than a week is an embarrassment, and costly. Can you even imagine a major banking institution’s site being down that long? Banks in the U.S. are prepared for DDoS. But what about other organizations? Are non-banks getting ready for DDoS, or do they still see this as only a threat to banking institutions? What you think? Let us know in the comment section below. Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/ddos-no-industry-safe-p-1524

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DDoS: Lessons From U.K. Attacks

Network Solutions Recovers After DDoS Attack

Network Solutions said it’s fully mitigated a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that compromised some services last week, and that attack volumes against the company had returned to normal. “We experience DDoS attacks almost daily, but our automatic mitigation protocols usually handle the attacks without any impact to our customers,” said John Herbkersman, a spokesman for Network Solutions’ parent company, Web.com, via email. Network Solutions manages more than more than 6.6 million domains, provides hosting services, registers domain names and also sells SSL certificates, among other services. But Monday, some customers reported still experiencing domain name server (DNS) and website updating difficulties that dated to the start of the DDoS attacks. The company, however, disputed those claims. “Some customers may be experiencing issues, but they are not related to last week’s DDoS attack,” said Herbkersman. The DDoS attacks began last week, with Network Solutions at first reporting that “some Network Solutions hosting customers are reporting latency issues,” according to a “notice to customers who are experiencing hosting issues” posted to the company’s website on Tuesday, July 16. “Our technology team is aware of the problem, and they’re working to resolve it as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience,” it said. As the week continued, the company posted updates via Twitter and to its Facebook page. By Wednesday, it said that the outages were due to a DDoS attack “that is impacting our customers as well as the Network Solutions site.” It said that the company’s technology staff were “working to mitigate the situation.” Later on Wednesday the company declared via Twitter: “The recent DDOS attack affecting customers has now been mitigated. Customer websites should be resolving normally. Thanks for your patience.” The Network Solutions website wasn’t available or updateable for the duration of the attacks. But that wasn’t apparent to all customers, who might not have turned to Facebook and Twitter seeking updates about the company’s service availability. One InformationWeek reader, who emailed Friday, accused Network Solutions of being less than forthcoming about the fact that the outages were being caused by a DDoS attack, “which they acknowledged only when calling them,” after he found only the “notice to customers who are experiencing hosting issues” post on the company’s site. “They have been trying to bury it,” he alleged. “Some sites were down for the entire day.” Herbkersman brushed off the criticism. “In addition to Facebook, we communicated via the Network Solutions’ website and via Twitter,” he said. “We also responded directly to customers who called our customer service team and those who contacted us via social media channels.” Friday, the company did publish a fuller accounting of the outage to its website. “Earlier this week, Network Solutions experienced a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on its servers that affected our customers. The Network Solutions technology team quickly identified the issue and implemented measures to mitigate the attack,” read a statement posted to the company’s site and cross-referenced on its Facebook page. “We apologize to our customers who were impacted.” “Are we getting refunded some money because of your 99.99% uptime guarantee?” responded one member via Facebook. “Feel free to call our support team and they will be happy to discuss,” came a reply from Network Solutions. Customers might have had to contend with more than just the DDoS attack. A Tuesday Facebook post — since deleted, which the company said it made to help direct customers to more recent information about the DDoS-driven outages — drew comments from customers reporting DNS issues. “There were multiple reports on the July 16, 2013 Facebook thread that appear to indicate customer DNS records were corrupted before the DDoS induced outage,” Craig Williams, a technical leader in the Cisco Systems threat research group, said in a blog post. The one-two punch of domain name resolution difficulties and a DDoS attack could have left numerous sites inaccessible not just during the attack, but in subsequent days, as the company attempted to identify the extent of the damage and make repairs in subsequent days. Last week’s DDoS attack was the second such attack for Network Solutions customers in less than a month. “In [the] previous outage, domain name servers were redirected away from their proper IP addresses,” said Williams. In that case, however, at least some of the DNS issues appeared to be “a result of a server misconfiguration while Network Solutions was attempting to mitigate a DDoS attack.” Herbkersman, the Web.com spokesman, said last week’s outages were entirely driven by the DDoS attacks, rather than the company’s response to those attacks. Source: http://www.informationweek.com/security/attacks/network-solutions-recovers-after-ddos-at/240158685

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Network Solutions Recovers After DDoS Attack

Network Solutions restores service after DDoS attack

Network Solutions said Wednesday it has restored services after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack knocked some websites it hosts offline for a few hours. The company, which is owned by Web.com, registers domain names, offers hosting services, sells SSL certificates and provides other website-related administration services. Network Solutions wrote on Facebook around mid-day Wednesday EDT that it was under attack. About three hours later, it said most customer websites should resolve normally. Some customers commented on Facebook, however, that they were still experiencing downtime. Many suggested a problem with Network Solutions’ DNS (Domain Name System) servers, which are used to look up domain names and translate the names into an IP addresses that can be requested by a browser. DDoS attacks are a favored method to disrupt websites and involve sending large amounts of data in hopes of overwhelming servers and causing websites to not respond to requests. Focusing DDoS attacks on DNS servers has proven to be a very effective attack method. In early June, three domain name management and hosting providers — DNSimple, easyDNS and TPP Wholesale — reported DNS-related outages caused by DDoS attacks. Hosting service DNSimple said it came under a DNS reflection attack, where DNS queries are sent to one party but the response is directed to another network, exhausting the victim network’s bandwidth. Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2044618/network-solutions-restores-service-after-ddos-attack.html

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Network Solutions restores service after DDoS attack

Many online newspapers become DDoS victims

At 4.11 pm of July 7, when accessing Dan Tri newspaper at dantri.com.vn, readers would see the words “Ban hay thuc hien phep tinh de tiep tuc su dung bao Dan Tri” showing that the access was denied. Dan Tri was just one of the many online newspapers hacked in recent days under a large scale DDoS offensive of the hackers. The hacking made a lot of newspapers inaccessible. Some readers still could access websites, but they had to try many times and wait with patience. Internet security experts have commented that the attack might have been well prepared for a long time, because it was conducted in a very methodical way. HVAOnline, a security forum, reported that since July 4, Thanh Nien, Tuoi tre, Dan Tri, VietNamNet, Kenh 14 have been the victims of the DDoS attacks, noting that the number of hacked online newspapers is on the rise. It is estimated that each of the newspapers incur the DDoS attack capacity of 50-70 Mbps, while the capacity was up to 1.3 Gbps for some newspapers. To date, some newspapers have fixed the problems, but the access remains unstable. According to Vo Do Thang, Director of Athena, an Internet security training center in HCM City, the current attack power would be unbearable to the small online newspapers. As such, the hacking would cause serious consequences, especially if it lasts for a long time. The experts said hackers purposely attacked the server of VDC 2 (the Vietnam Data communication Company) where the servers of many online newspapers are located. As a result, not only the VDC 2’s server, but the newspapers’ servers also suffered. HVAOnline said the forum itself and many other forums, information portals in Vietnam also incurred many DDoS attacks, but at weaker intensity. In fact, experts said the attacks began in June 2013 already at low intensity, which could be the preparation for the “general offensive” in July. They believe that the hackers may belong to a big and powerful organization to be able to mobilize such large botnets and zombies for the large scale attack. The hackers reportedly timed their attacks in their way. After finishing one attack aiming to one goal, they began the attack to another goal. After that, they unexpectedly returned and attacked the first aiming point. This way of hacking might make readers and the newspapers’ administrators misunderstand that the newspapers got troubles, while they did not think of a DDoS attack. Buu Dien newspaper on July 11 quoted the Director of an Internet security firm as saying that the firm, after analyzing the attack, found out that the attack was originated from an IP in Vietnam. BKAV’s Nguyen Minh Duc said two days ago that BKAV has not received any request for help from the hacked newspapers. A Symantec’s report in 2011 said that Vietnam has become the favorite space of the world’s hackers, and that it is the biggest botnet in the world. One of the reasons behind this is that Vietnamese don’t install anti-virus software on their computers, and they have the habit of installing cracked software pieces, or downloading some software products from unreliable websites. Source: http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/science-it/79186/many-online-newspapers-become-ddos-victims.html

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Many online newspapers become DDoS victims

Staying Informed About DDoS Threats

Distributed-denial-of-service attacks have plagued U.S. banks since last September. But DDoS attacks pose a persistent, genuine threat to other sectors as well. Any organization with an online presence is at risk. Successful DDoS attacks can take a website offline, damaging brand image and chipping away at consumer trust. But they also can do much more. In some cases, these attacks can be used to mask fraud by distracting security and IT departments while banking accounts or confidential files are simultaneously being taken over. To provide insights on the latest DDoS threats – and effective mitigation strategies – Information Security Media Group has launched a DDoS Resource Center . The resource center, sponsored by online security firms Akamai, Fortinet, Neustar, Radware and VeriSign, includes timely interviews, in-depth features, news stories and blogs that offer insights about emerging botnets and attack techniques from those who are analyzing and battling DDoS on the frontlines. The resource center also offers expert insights on practical steps for minimizing the impact of DDoS attacks. By visiting the resource center, you’ll get the latest information on the different types of DDoS attacks, such as DNS reflection and application layer attacks, as well as the attacks’ possible links to fraud . You’ll learn about DDoS protections and mitigation services , notification and response strategies, and DDoS detection measures. Here’s a sampling of the variety of content our resource center offers: An interview with ex-FBI investigator Shawn Henry , who shares insights about cross-border and cross-industry collaboration that’s taking place behind the scenes to strengthen DDoS and cybersecurity knowledge. An analysis of a new type of DDoS strike that targeted two U.S. banks for what some say could have been a test for more attacks to come. A blog about how the botnet, known as Brobot, that’s been used in DDoS attacks against U.S. banks is being retooled to defeat common mitigation practices. And an interview with former federal banking examiner Amy McHugh about why community banks are prime targets for DDoS strikes being waged as modes of distraction to veil account takeover attempts. The DDoS Resource Center also provides research, white papers and webinars, including a session on new defense strategies for DDoS , which includes insights from Rodney Joffee of DDoS-mitigation provider Neustar and Mike Wyffels, senior vice president and chief technology officer of multibank holding company QCR Holdings Inc. Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/blogs/staying-informed-about-ddos-threats-p-1506

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Staying Informed About DDoS Threats

Financial Security: Learning From DDoS Attacks

Exactly how big are distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in mid-2013? “Just big enough” is what most attackers would say. The Cyber Fighters of Izz ad-din Al Qassam, a group claiming to protest an anti-Moslem video and considered by many experts to be the perpetrators of the attacks, have shown a knack for ratcheting up the volume as banks invest in greater DDoS mitigation bandwidth. The al Qassam template hasn’t gone unnoticed. In the cyber underground, criminal gangs have chatted about the group’s favorite weapon, the “itsoknoproblembro” DDoS toolkit, which hits various parts of a web site at the same time and floods servers with traffic up to 70Gbps. The al Qassam botnet — dubbed the “brobot” — is striking too. Instead of marshaling tens of thousands of infected home computers, it uses hosting providers’ or business’ commercial content servers, which offer fatter pipes and bandwidth galore. The same tactics are available to those whose motive is greed, with the Internet itself serving as their weapons storehouse. Since they never pay for those high-capacity servers and all that power, what’s to stop attackers from using as much as they want? Though an attack of less than 2Gbps can take down many sites, attackers want to be sure your site is down throughout the world. In fact, they use free web monitoring services to make sure that folks in Chicago and Paris can’t reach you. If the attack isn’t working globally, the attackers up the ante. Just figuratively, though–humongous attacks cost no more than surgical strikes. If this is bad news for top-tier banks, it’s potentially disastrous for smaller institutions lacking the budget and expertise to handle attacks themselves. Fortunately, a little planning and preparation can make a big difference. “Does This Hardware Make Me Look Fat?” It Pays To Be Less Attractive To Attackers. Short of making arrests, the good guys can’t stop the bad guys from launching DDoS attacks. So increasingly, larger banks have taken steps to become less-appealing targets — less likely to go offline for long periods of time and more likely to retain customers thanks to helpful communications. Best practice number one: Distribute your Internet infrastructure. Separate your DNS, e-commerce, payment gateways and VPNs. If everything’s on the same infrastructure and you’re socked with a DDoS attack, the damage is more widespread and the attackers win. Say your DNS is hit. Not good, but if your VPN, for instance, is on a different circuit (either real or virtual), your staff has backdoor access to email and other functions. Because you’ve segregated your private- and public-facing systems, business doesn’t grind to a complete halt. To accomplish this, find a trusted third party to manage infrastructure like DNS. Or at least have a Plan B, enabling you to park your DNS, VPN or web service somewhere else until the attack ends. By lining up a willing provider well in advance, you’ll spare yourself some agony when the dirt hits the fan. It’s also smart to assume that someday you’re going to be hit. To paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in DDoS, but DDoS is interested in you. With over 7,000 attacks daily, it’s only a matter of time, so more banks and credit unions are crafting emergency plans. Like natural disaster planning or certain business recovery efforts, these preparations go far beyond technical responses. It starts with being ready to do business, gasp, offline. If your credit union site is down, you may decide to extend your regular business hours, which in turn might require extra tellers and call center operators, or even coffee and cookies for customers in long lines. You’ll also need to let people know about any such contingencies. Be ready to communicate with customers quickly and reassuringly. Email may not be an option, so consider radio announcements or other media outlets, including a company web page separate from the one that’s under attack. Also think about a toll-free number your customers can call. How much detail should you reveal about the impact of an attack? That’s up to you, of course. Some financial institutions have chosen to say as little as possible, for fear of feeding attackers valuable information. Others have been more transparent, betting they’ll reap the reward in customer gratitude and fewer account defections. Whatever procedures you develop, be sure to practice them. You’ll never be ready for everything, but executing the basics well can help enormously. Again, the throes of a crisis aren’t the best time to white-board responses. Run drills of your emergency plan and you’ll likely accomplish two things: more effective DDoS mitigation and better core service, the latter tending to slip when attacks are all-consuming. While al Qassam is a role model for cyber miscreants, the major banks are a more positive one in the DDoS protection arena. Smaller banks and credit unions don’t have the same deep pockets, but they can still make plans, develop responses and make smart technology investments. Inertia is the one thing they truly can’t afford. For protection against your eCommerce site click here . Source: http://www.banktech.com/risk-management/financial-security-learning-from-ddos-at/240157243

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Financial Security: Learning From DDoS Attacks