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CERT issues cyber attack warning for India

Malware Reaper is acquiring internet-connected devices for coordinated attack, say State Cyber Police Mumbai: The Maharashtra Cyber Department is in the process of issuing a State-wide advisory outlining steps to prevent potential targets from falling prey after the New Delhi-based Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said it has received intelligence inputs about a massive cyber attack on several countries, including India. The CERT is the country’s central cyber security agency. Maharashtra Cyber Police officers confirmed to The Hindu that the attack would be similar to the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack that hit the State last year. In July 2016, The Hindu had reported how small and medium Internet Service Providers were under attack from unknown parties, who were pinging their servers incessantly to the point where the servers crashed, denying service to their clients and causing loss of revenue. According to sources, the imminent DDOS attack, which is believed to be on a much larger scale, is being readied using malware known by two names, Reaper and IoTroop, and is currently taking over thousands of machines connected to the internet to be used for a synchronised attack on the target servers. Maharashtra IG (Cyber) Brijesh Singh said, “Mirai had acquired five lakh devices. The Reaper malware has already affected two million devices worldwide, and is acquiring 10,000 devices per day. It seems to be targeting CCTV camera systems and Digital Video Recorders connected to the internet.” Bot attack A Cyber Police officer said, “It’s difficult to say at this point exactly who the targets are, but we have enough information to indicate that machines connected to the internet, including cell phones, laptops, CCTV cameras and other devices, are susceptible. A large number of such machines are being hacked and turned into bots as we speak. Our cyber intelligence network indicates a lot of abnormal behaviour on the internet, consistent with hacking of devices.” A bot, or robot, is an automated programme. In this kind of cyber attack, hackers use malware to infect devices to turn them into bots that do their bidding. Sources said the perpetrators of Reaper are currently creating a huge network of bots, called a botnet in cyberspeak. In October 2016, a malware known as Mirai had executed multiple DDOs attacks on servers of Dyn, a leading domain name service provider, affecting several popular websites including Twitter, Netflix and Reddit. Cyber Police officers said Reaper is amassing bots on a much larger scale than Mirai. “Once the botnet is ready as per the perpetrators’ requirements, they simply have to command the bots to ping servers of the target all at once, resulting in a server crash. Depending on the size of the company or industry targeted, it will result in massive losses of revenue.” A possible way to execute the attack would be that the bots are pre-programmed to strike on a particular day. This possibility is also being probed, officers said. Superintendent of Police Balsing Rajput, Maharashtra Cyber Police, confirmed that intelligence inputs about Reaper have been received. “We are working on the information and will soon be coming out with an advisory regarding the same.” Source: Malware Reaper is acquiring internet-connected devices for coordinated attack, say State Cyber Police Mumbai: The Maharashtra Cyber Department is in the process of issuing a State-wide advisory outlining steps to prevent potential targets from falling prey after the New Delhi-based Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said it has received intelligence inputs about a massive cyber attack on several countries, including India. The CERT is the country’s central cyber security agency. Maharashtra Cyber Police officers confirmed to The Hindu that the attack would be similar to the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack that hit the State last year. In July 2016, The Hindu had reported how small and medium Internet Service Providers were under attack from unknown parties, who were pinging their servers incessantly to the point where the servers crashed, denying service to their clients and causing loss of revenue. According to sources, the imminent DDOS attack, which is believed to be on a much larger scale, is being readied using malware known by two names, Reaper and IoTroop, and is currently taking over thousands of machines connected to the internet to be used for a synchronised attack on the target servers. Maharashtra IG (Cyber) Brijesh Singh said, “Mirai had acquired five lakh devices. The Reaper malware has already affected two million devices worldwide, and is acquiring 10,000 devices per day. It seems to be targeting CCTV camera systems and Digital Video Recorders connected to the internet.” Bot attack A Cyber Police officer said, “It’s difficult to say at this point exactly who the targets are, but we have enough information to indicate that machines connected to the internet, including cell phones, laptops, CCTV cameras and other devices, are susceptible. A large number of such machines are being hacked and turned into bots as we speak. Our cyber intelligence network indicates a lot of abnormal behaviour on the internet, consistent with hacking of devices.” A bot, or robot, is an automated programme. In this kind of cyber attack, hackers use malware to infect devices to turn them into bots that do their bidding. Sources said the perpetrators of Reaper are currently creating a huge network of bots, called a botnet in cyberspeak. In October 2016, a malware known as Mirai had executed multiple DDOs attacks on servers of Dyn, a leading domain name service provider, affecting several popular websites including Twitter, Netflix and Reddit. Cyber Police officers said Reaper is amassing bots on a much larger scale than Mirai. “Once the botnet is ready as per the perpetrators’ requirements, they simply have to command the bots to ping servers of the target all at once, resulting in a server crash. Depending on the size of the company or industry targeted, it will result in massive losses of revenue.” A possible way to execute the attack would be that the bots are pre-programmed to strike on a particular day. This possibility is also being probed, officers said. Superintendent of Police Balsing Rajput, Maharashtra Cyber Police, confirmed that intelligence inputs about Reaper have been received. “We are working on the information and will soon be coming out with an advisory regarding the same.” Source: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/cert-issues-cyber-attack-warning-for-india/article19920037.ece

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CERT issues cyber attack warning for India

Czech Parliamentary Election Websites Hit by Cyberattacks

The Czech statistical office has reported DDoS (Distrubuted Denial of Service) attacks on websites related to the recent parliamentary elections during the vote count. A number of websites of the Czech statistical office (CZSO) have been subject to cyberattacks during the counting of votes in the Czech parliament’s lower house election, Petra Bacova, the CZSO spokeswoman, told Sputnik Sunday. “The websites related to the parliamentary elections — volby.cz and volbyhned.cz — have temporary failed to function due to DDoS attacks [Distributed Denial of Service] during the vote count on Saturday. These attacks have not affected the overall progress of the election,” Bacova said. The police along with the Czech National Cyber and Information Security Agency have already launched an investigation into the attacks. “Thanks to the rapid response, the attacks on the both aforementioned servers have been neutralized, while the work of the websites has been resumed,” Bacova said. The Czech Republic held an election to the lower house of the parliament on Friday-Saturday. The centrist ANO political party won the election, receiving 29.64 percent of votes. Czech President Milos Zeman stated that he was ready to appoint Andrej Babis, ANO’s leader, as Czech prime minister. Source: https://sputniknews.com/europe/201710231058456317-czech-election-hit-cyberattack/

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Czech Parliamentary Election Websites Hit by Cyberattacks

New Mirai-Like Malware Targets IoT Devices

Security researchers are warning about malware that’s been enslaving routers, webcams and DVRs across the world to create a giant botnet capable of disrupting the internet. The malware, called Reaper or IoTroop, isn’t the first to target poorly secured devices. But it’s doing so at an alarmingly fast rate, according to security firm Check Point, which noticed the malicious code last month. The malware has infected “hundreds of thousands” of devices, said Maya Horowitz, threat intelligence group manager at Check Point. Reaper brings up memories of malware known as Mirai, which formed its own giant botnet in 2016 and infected over 500,000 IoT devices, according to some estimates. It then began launching a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that disrupted internet access across the US. Reaper could be used to launch a similar attack, Check Point researchers said. The good news is the infected bots haven’t launched any DDoS campaigns. Instead, they’re still focused on enslaving new devices. Researchers at security firm Qihoo 360 also noticed the Reaper malware, and found evidence it was trying to infect at least 2 million vulnerable devices. Reaper even borrows some source code from Mirai, though it spreads itself differently, Qihoo said. Unlike Mirai, which relies on cracking the default password to gain access to the device, Reaper has been found targeting around a dozen different vulnerabilities found in products from D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, and others. All these vulnerabilities are publicly known, and at least some of the vendors have released security patches to fix them. But that hasn’t stopped the mysterious developer behind Reaper from exploiting the vulnerabilities. In many cases, IoT devices will remain unpatched because the security fixes aren’t easy to install. Who may have created the malware and what their motives are still isn’t known, but all the tools needed to make it are actually available online, Horowitz said. For instance, the source code to the Mirai malware was dumped on a hacking forum last year. In addition, data about the vulnerabilities Reaper targets can be found in security research posted online. “It’s so easy to be a threat actor when all these public exploits and malware can be just posted on GitHub,” she said. “It’s really easy to just rip the code, and combine, to create your own strong cyber weapon.” Unfortunately, little might be done to stop the Reaper malware. Security experts have all been warning that poorly secured IoT devices need to be patched, but clearly many haven’t. “This is another wakeup call” for manufacturers, Horowitz said. Source: https://www.pcmag.com/news/356926/new-mirai-like-malware-targets-iot-devices

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New Mirai-Like Malware Targets IoT Devices

400 attacks per day: Behind Australia’s growing DDoS attack surface

There is no denying that the number of DDoS attacks has been increasing everywhere around the world, new variants of attacking tools and techniques have been made available to the attackers much faster than we have seen in the past. Based on the statistics we have collected for Australia, the number of DDoS attacks have been increased roughly 25% each year, and we believe that number could become around 30,000 attacks per month by end of 2020. The largest DDoS attack targeting Australia in 2017 is around 228 Gbps in June, although these kinds of multi-gigabit attacks always catch our attention, they don’t really happen very often. Almost 80% of the DDoS attacks seen in Australia are under 2 Gbps, but still could possibly overwhelm the bandwidth of the internet connection for a lot of enterprises. Another interesting observation is that the number of DDoS attacks between 10 to 50 Gbps has been steadily increasing from last year. Given the fact that the attackers are getting more weapons in their arsenal – for example, IoT and mobile devices, this means the size and frequency of the DDoS attacks will keep growing. When we look at the countries where most of the DDoS attacks were being sourced, we have observed that countries such as the US, China, Korea, UK and Germany are usually at the top of the list. As DDoS attacks are typically sourced from infected computer devices (notnets), countries with a high computer population may also have a high infected rate, particularly if pirated software is being used to a large extent in that country. In recent years, with the arrival of IoT botnets, such as Mirai, some Asian countries with a high deployment rate of IoT devices have also been seen as major sources of DDoS attacks. If we turn our focus from the source country to the destination country being attacked most often, we then find the countries which are on the top of the list of the attacking sources, are also high on the list for the receiving side. A possible reason could be that the high computer population and adoption rate in the country also means a lot of business is being conducted over the network, such as the financial sector, consumer sector, government and so on, giving the attackers more targets to aim for. Source: https://securitybrief.com.au/story/400-attacks-day-behind-australias-growing-ddos-attack-surface/

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400 attacks per day: Behind Australia’s growing DDoS attack surface

What is cyber terrorism?

How is cyber terrorism defined and how likely is an attack? Everyone is familiar with what “terrorism” means, but when we stick the word “cyber” in front of it, things get a bit more nebulous. Whereas the effects of real-world terrorism are both obvious and destructive, those of cyber terrorism are often hidden to those who aren’t directly affected. Also, those effects are more likely to be disruptive than destructive, although this isn’t always the case. Cyber terrorism incidents One of the earliest examples of cyber terrorism is a 1996 attack on an ISP in Massachusetts. Cited by Edward Maggio of the New York Institute of Technology and the authors of Internet: A Historical Encyclopedia, Volume 2 , a hacker allegedly associated with the white supremacist movement in the US broke into his Massachusetts-based ISP after it prevented him from sending out a worldwide racist message under its name. The individual deleted some records and temporarily disabled the ISP’s services, leaving the threat “you have yet to see true electronic terrorism. This is a promise” While this is a clear example of a cyber-terrorist incident carried out by a malicious, politically motivated individual that caused both disruption and damage, other frequently listed examples fit less clearly into the category of “terrorism”. For example, while attacks that have taken out emergency services call centres or air-traffic control could be considered cyber terrorism, the motivation of the individuals is often unclear. If a person caused real-life disruption to these systems, but had no particular motivation other than mischief, would they be classed as a terrorist? Perhaps not. Similarly, cyber protests such as those that occurred in 1999 during the Kosovo against NATO’s bombing campaign in the country or website defacements and DDoS attacks are arguably online versions of traditional protests, rather than terrorism. Additionally, in the case of civil war, if one side commits a cyber attack against the other then it can be said to be more of an act of war – or cyber war – than one of cyber terror. Again, where there is a cold war between nations, associated cyber attacks could be thought of as sub-conflict level skirmishes. Indeed, the FBI defines cyber terrorism as “[any] premeditated, politically motivated attack against information, computer systems or computer programs, and data which results in violence against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents”. Under this definition, very few of the tens-of-thousands of cyber attacks carried out every year would count as cyber terrorism. The future of cyber terrorism As the number of connected devices increases, the likelihood of a more destructive cyber terrorist incident – something on a par with an attack in the physical world – becomes increasingly possible. The security industry is full of stories and proofs of concept about hacking medical devices, with two particularly famous demonstrations being given by New Zealander Barnaby Jack. This opens up the possibility for targeted assassinations or mass-scale killings carried out remotely and potentially across borders. Similarly, there are concerns self-driving vehicles could be turned into remote-controlled missiles and used in an attack, although the counter argument is that such vehicles will make the roads safer in the face of terrorists driving conventional vehicles into crowds. Another possible style of cyber terrorism is disruption of infrastructure in a way that could potentially endanger life. For example, in 2016 an unknown actor caused a disruption that saw two apartment buildings in Finland lost hot water and heating for a week in the dead of winter. In locations as cold as Finland, actions like this could cause illness and death if widespread and sustained. Nevertheless, the likelihood is most serious cyber attacks will be acts of cyber warfare, rather than cyber terrorism, as nation states have larger and more sophisticated resources at hand. Source: http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/29726/what-is-cyber-terrorism

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What is cyber terrorism?

More than half of businesses fell victim to DDoS attacks in the past year, survey shows

CDNeworks research shows 54% of businesses were hit by distributed denial of service attacks in the last year, and many feel they are underinvesting in cyber defences. More than half of businesses (54%) have been victims of successful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks over the past 12 months, according to research from cloud security firm CDNetworks. The company surveyed 305 organisations in the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland about the technologies that protect them from cyber attacks. Some 83% of the respondents felt either confident or very confident about their cyber defences, but 44% felt they were currently underinvesting in anti-DDoS technologies. Chris Townsley, Emea director for CDNetworks, told Computer Weekly that this mix of opinions was strange. “Not only is there widespread complacency – the overwhelming confidence in DDoS protection, undermined by the high proportion of businesses suffering successful attacks – but there is also a significant number of businesses that are worried that they have not invested enough,” he said. “It is odd to see so much confidence alongside such doubt about whether enough is being done.” The survey also found that 64% of organisations said they would be investing more in such technology over the next year, and in terms of expectation of an attack, 79% rated the likelihood of an attack as between “likely” and “almost certain”. This attitude is reflected in the frequency of incidents, with 86% saying they had suffered a DDoS attack in the previous 12 months. The size of attacks is also growing. In the first half of 2015, the largest DDoS attack recorded was 21Gbps, but during the equivalent period in 2016, it was 58.8Gbps. Also, 31% of attacks in the first half of 2016 were 50Gbps or more, but there were no attacks of that size in the first half of 2015. Townsley added: “As the size of attacks increases, businesses need to look more at protection from the edge and not at the origin or datacentre. “As the size of traffic increases, so does the likelihood that the bandwidth of the origin server will be saturated, no matter what protection is in place to keep it up and functioning. “Also, with the frequency of attacks increasing, businesses should move to a mindset of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ an attack will occur.” When asked whether the number of successful attacks was due to businesses buying the wrong security products, Townsley said: “It could be that the type of protection was not suitable, or was suitable for some types of attack but not all. As the types of attack are changing all the time, products can become obsolete.” Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450428288/More-than-half-of-businesses-fell-victim-to-DDoS-attacks-in-the-past-year-survey-shows

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More than half of businesses fell victim to DDoS attacks in the past year, survey shows

Cybersecurity: into the data breach

Cybersecurity has become a significant issue as attacks are increasing. In the new payments ecosystem, where third-party developers can directly interact with banks’ customers, data privacy and security become paramount, according to the World Payments Report 2017 by Capgemini and BNP Paribas . A significant issue to address as the new payments ecosystem evolves is that of cybersecurity. During the past few years, cyberattacks and crimes have increased across the globe, with corporate and financial institution entities, large and small, targeted. The price of increasing collaboration among industry stakeholders in the new payments ecosystem could be an increase in cyber security vulnerabilities. To alleviate this risk, corporates are increasingly turning to their banks for advice on how to strengthen their infrastructures against cyber attacks. To ensure the highest levels of cybersecurity and the security of infrastructures in the new payments ecosystem, each stakeholder must assess security across all the data sources and points of collaboration. The need for robust cyber security solutions to cater to all forms of cyberthreats has never been greater for corporate treasurers as new technologies proliferate and collaboration increases. Of prime importance for corporates in developing defence mechanisms is awareness of potential cyber security risks, regular updating of security profiles and continuous training of employees. This is because attacks perpetrated by cybercriminals are unpredictable in both timing and nature. The vulnerabilities stakeholders face include cyber security, data privacy, data breaches, and payments fraud. The utmost vigilance is required to protect organisations against cyber attacks and all stakeholders, including regulators, must be more proactive regarding cybersecurity, with ownership of the issue taken to prevent attacks. In the new payments ecosystem, third-party developers can directly interact with a partner banks’ customers, raising questions about data privacy and security. In an increasingly networked ecosystem, identifying the source of attack will be a challenge. Verizon’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report found that security incidents and data breaches affect both large and small financial organisations almost equally. However, the security of larger banks is difficult to compromise as they invest more in cyber security solutions. Smaller banks, which do not have the same access to resources, are more prone to cyberattacks. A fraud survey by the Association for Financial Professionals and JP Morgan found that the highest levels of fraud in 2016 were perpetrated via cheques. However, there was a surge in wire transfer fraud, from 27 per cent in 2014 to 46 per cent in 2016. An increasing number of cyber security breaches are causing significant losses for banks and corporates across the world. Among recent incidents, in February 2016, a cyberheist at Bangladesh Central Bank resulted in a loss of $81 million and prevented another $850 million worth of transactions from being processed on the Swift network. Similarly, in May 2016 cybercriminals hacked the Swift system and stole $9 million from Ecuadorian bank Banco del Austro. In May 2017, the WannaCry ransomware attack affected more than 150 countries and 200,000 computers, as attackers demanded each of those affected to pay up to $300 worth of bitcoins to unlock their systems. In a survey for World Payments Report , bank executives ranked distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and customer payments fraud as the main security challenges they face. Also of concern were the high levels of card fraud, which place a significant cost burden on banks. The increasing adoption of digital offerings in transaction banking is also giving rise to higher levels of payments fraud, making cyber security a top priority for banks and corporates. Customer payments fraud is the top ranked concern for financial technology companies and other survey respondents. This group is much less likely to view DDoS attacks as a threat; data breaches due to hacking attacks was of more concern, as was internal fraud. While banks are investing significantly in cybersecurity solutions, there are still many risks at the corporate level that they cannot manage. Corporates must, therefore, step up their own efforts to manage cybersecurity risk and not leave it all to the banks. They should upgrade their internal systems, train their staff, and review their partners’ systems. The idea of a cyberattacker as a lone figure hacking into systems is now obsolete. Cyberattacks are perpetrated by entities that are set up like companies, with project managers, key performance indicators and operations. Attacks to compromise corporates and banks are designed to be multi-staged, with two main objectives: commercial gain and industry espionage. In general, the funds received via attacks go into the coffers of the organisation, while the intelligence gained during an attack will be used by perpetrators to gain a business advantage. Attacks can happen at any time, and over time, therefore all corporates should be vigilant and on constant guard against attacks. So serious are the growing cyberattack and data breach problems that regulators across the globe should move from their present reactive approach to a more proactive one. Stringent regulations and fines to strengthen cybersecurity laws are required from regulators. Many regulations related to this are, however, still in the inception stage. Europe has relatively the most mature cybersecurity and data privacy laws, with recent initiatives including the Electronic Identification and Trusted Service which was launched in 2016. Effective cybersecurity requires organisations to efficiently and quickly identify, mitigate and manage cyber risks and incidents. All stakeholders are taking measures to strengthen the security of transactions against potential cyber threats. Banks and other stakeholders have three options available to them: collaborating with financial technology companies, making investments in advanced technologies and monitoring tools, and strengthening internal governance to ensure seamless compliance. Collaboration with fintechs This is occurring in several areas including secure authentication and authorisation, account onboarding, identity verification and anti-money laundering. Examples include India’s Yes Bank and FortyTwoLabs’ development of multi-factor authentication tool PI-Control, which enables users to apply for internet banking access, pay bills, transfer funds, seek loans, make remittances and undertake other card transactions. Rabobank in the Netherlands is working with Signicat to provide digital identity solutions that can be easily integrated using API technology. As banks increasingly collaborate with fintechs and regtechs, due diligence, adherence to industry standards and participating in the development of new industry standards has become critical. Investment in advanced technologies and monitoring tools Blockchain technology is still in a nascent stage, with its potential as an enabler of digital identity and payment transaction security still being tested. Banks can leverage the technology to differentiate themselves in the provision of digital identity, authentication and know your customer services. Banks are investing in projects that combine advanced cryptography that supports private or permitted use of blockchain technology with transaction security elements that provider greater transaction visibility. To ensure the highest levels of cybersecurity and transaction security, all the ecosystem participants must assess security from multiple sources in the network. Common security standards and protocols when developing and investing in new technologies and monitoring tools will be increasingly important as collaboration increases. With a common network governing the interfaces between banks and third-party providers, various groups are developing network-based security standards to ensure a secure environment is built around the dynamic payments ecosystem. The ability to respond to cyber threats or attacks in real-time is hampered by legacy security systems. Traditional security monitoring typically identified and reacted to cyber threats in isolation. A modern approach identifies specific unusual patterns or behaviour and alerts operational teams to anomalous activity. Advanced machine learning algorithms are the logical next step as response mechanisms in the event of a threat. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are being piloted globally, yet legal issues regarding accountability for the actions of such systems persist. Contextualisation of threats (linking the threat to the business and not just to technology) is needed to identify the source and understand the objective behind any attack. Another useful approach is risk-based authentication (RBA) to detect the risk profile of transaction banks and retailers. Using RBA and analytics processes, banks can create a threat matrix of fraud profiles to triangulate the threat instances to their origin and be able to proactively block fraudulent traffic. Behavioural analytics, AI, machine learning and threat matrix can help to continuously monitor the ecosystem network and provide threat intelligence. Banks can undertake various activities such as continuously checking all systems for possible threats, observing markets, scenario simulation, examination of previous attacks, monitoring activities and applications, and establishing a payments control centre to permanently monitor payments and identify exceptional situations. Robust internal governance A robust governance model and standards are imperative for seamless functioning of the new payments ecosystem. Banks and treasurers need to interact with central authorities and regulators to share feedback, which in turn will help to improve compliance. Banks and treasurers are increasingly collaborating with regtechs to ensure compliance. Industry stakeholders must establish common data, technical, legal, functional, and security standards for robust governance. Firms will be well served if they can ensure that security systems have multiple layers to withstand ‘flood’ attacks. To ensure a foolproof system, firms should identify the data needs of all stakeholders before finalising the controls to put in place. With the onset of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in the EU, the focus on compliance with data privacy and security has increased. Firms must install a dedicated team to continuously review and update security policies. Additionally, stakeholders should work with the local regulatory authorities to understand the complexity of different regional legal requirements and expectations for each country. Firms must ensure mandatory data privacy and security training is conducted at regular intervals. Educating employees on potential threats and ensuring they keep their systems updated would have prevented, or greatly reduced the impact of, events such as the WannaCry ransomware attack. Source: http://www.bankingtech.com/1019032/cybersecurity-into-the-data-breach/

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Cybersecurity: into the data breach

Despite increased spend, why doesn’t DDoS mitigation always work?

Newly published research suggests that while there has been a marked increase in spending to mitigate against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, organisations are still falling victim. Newly published research suggests that while there has been a marked increase in spending to mitigate against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, organisations are still falling victim. The ‘DDoS 2017 Report: Dangerous Overconfidence’, published today by CDNetworks, reveals that spending on DDoS mitigation in the UK has increased over the last year. Indeed, it says that the average annual spend is now £24,200 and 20 percent of businesses are investing more than £40,000 per year. While 83 percent of businesses were confident of their resilience against the business continuity threat, despite the greater investment more than half (54 percent) still ended up victims of a successful DDoS attack during the last 12 months that took their website, network or online app down. According to Kaspersky Lab’s Global IT Security Risks Survey 2017, some 33 percent of organisations have experienced an attack this year, twice the number in 2016. While 20 percent were small businesses, 41 percent were enterprises. Then there’s the Neustar Global DDoS Attacks and Cyber Security Insights report which revealed 92 percent of those attacked reported theft of intellectual property, customer data or financial assets; and 36 percent saw malware activation happening during the DDoS attack. Research by the Imperva Incapsula security team suggests that attack patterns are changing, with high packet rate attacks becoming the norm. An A10 Networks report confirms this to be the case, suggesting that attacks greater than 50Gbps have quadrupled over the past two years and companies experiencing between 6-25 attacks per year also quadrupling in that timeframe. Given the growing threat, and you only have to look at some of the recent victims such as The National Lottery and Blizzard Entertainment for example, to realise that DDoS mitigation isn’t always working. SC Media UK put the ‘why does DDoS mitigation fail’ question to several vendors providing this type of service. But first, we spoke to Alex Nam, managing director of CDNetworks (US & EMEA) who told us there are various reasons including that some forms of DDoS mitigation don’t protect against all forms of attack. “A layer 7 DDoS attack, which impacts applications and the end-user,” Nam explained, “can only be protected against using web application firewall technology for example.” So not understanding the different types of attack, or the types of technology that can be protected, is a reason why DDoS mitigation often fails according to Nam. Rich Groves, the A10 director of research and development, thinks that the question would be better phrased as ‘what causes DDoS solutions to fail in certain instances?’ as he insists “otherwise it implies DDoS solutions are failing across the board, which isn’t the case.” Kirill Kasavchenko, principal security technologist (EMEA) at Arbor Network, also thinks that there is an important distinction to be made between whether DDoS mitigation fails or the approach to it does. “As the headlines became more dramatic, more vendors have rushed to claim they have a solution for the DDoS problem,” Kasavchenko explains, “this has caused much confusion in the market.” So, for example, elements of a layered security strategy such as IPS devices and firewalls address network integrity and confidentiality but not availability. They are stateful, inline, solutions that not only “are vulnerable to DDoS attacks” but “often become the targets themselves.” Indeed, Arbor’s annual security report shows 40 percent of respondents seeing firewalls fail as a direct result of a DDoS attack. Meanwhile, Ben Herzberg, security research group manager at Imperva, told SC Media that attackers are “changing tactics rapidly specifically to defeat anti-DDoS solutions, such as hit-and-run and pulse wave attacks” which should come as no great surprise to anyone. James Willett, SVP of products at Neustar, explained that attackers “routinely scout and reconnoitre their targets launching throttled attacks to identify defence response, defence tactics, and defence capacity.” Once known, the proper types and sizes of attacks can be readily crafted to overwhelm unsuspecting organisations that lack effective cloud-based mitigation depth. So what should enterprises be doing to ensure that spending on DDoS mitigation is invested wisely? “If they haven’t already, they should consider a cloud-based DDoS mitigation service that automatically routes traffic through the service and only delivers clean traffic,” Ben Herzberg insists, adding “these services are supported by dedicated security staff that track attack patterns on a daily basis and can quickly react to changing attack patterns.” James Willett suggests they need to understand that not all clouds are managed the same. “Organisations can ensure proper investments that reduce impact and minimise disruption risk,” he told SC, “by pressing security providers on their management of good and bad traffic.” Rich Groves agrees that the focus “should be on vendor performance and solution effectiveness rather than on any particular feature set.” The highest-performing DDoS detection and mitigation available to them at the best price range to identify attack traffic and eliminate it, in other words. But perhaps Kasavchenko has the most straightforward advice of all: “The number one thing to do is work with a DDoS mitigation vendor. Vendors who treat DDoS as an add-on are likely to have very limited capabilities…” Source: https://www.scmagazineuk.com/despite-increased-spend-why-doesnt-ddos-mitigation-always-work/article/699729/

Nginx with Stream Module Dynamic Upstream CNAME

In the age on scalable web applications , many organizations turn to cloud-based server hosting to dynamically add additional servers during peak usage, or attain redundancy by having multiple geographic web -server locations. One of the methods used for this is DNS CNAME resolution. Using this option with various cloud hosting providers that support it can allow the following: 1) Load Balancing. The CNAME DNS record can be configured to respond to requests with more then one IP Address, allowing load balancing of multiple origin servers, dynamically scaled by the cloud hosting providers DNS service. 2) Global Server Load Balancing. The cloud hosting DNS can provide different record results in different geographic areas of the world. This can be achieved based on Geo-Location or other methods. 3) Fail-over redundancy. Since the CNAME record is controlled by the cloud provider, upon failure of one data center, all records pointing to a geographic location which has failed can be automatically switched to the remaining data-center. Is there a way Nginx can perform Dynamic DNS resolution, for CNAME or other records used as Upstreams/Origins? Reverse proxies have been a core component of our service since 2007, to say we are experienced in this area is an understatement. Which is why when a customer of ours was having trouble configuring their open-source Nginx to use cnames for their load balancing configuration, they came to us to see if we had any advice or ideas (one of the many benefits being part of a fully managed DDoS mitigation service). The challenge the customer was facing, and which some of you Nginx administrators may be aware of, is that the open-source version of Nginx does not have a built in dynamic DNS resolver. Essentially it will only resolve domains initially on web-server “start”, and “reload”, but will not update the record if a DNS record changes during running operation. After doing some research on various forums and testing in our labs, we identified that in order to use open-source Nginx to dynamically resolve domains, one would have set the domain in a variable, which would then cause Nginx to resolve the domain in the variable dynamically, and according to Nginx’s DNS Cache/TTL . The variable is then used in the “proxy_pass” directive to send the visitor to the correct origin without requiring a reload to be kept up to date. **There is a problem with using the above workaround for Nginx’s “Stream” module; The “Set” directive does not exist. If you attempt to perform the same method on a TCP Pass-through using Nginx Stream, you will find that since the ‘set $variable “value”; ‘ method is not available within Nginx Stream. The previous method cannot be used. Is there a way to perform dynamic DNS resolution within open-source Nginx’s stream module, or is a 3rd party module that could be used? Although there is a “stream-lua-nginx” module by Openresty team being developed that could be used for such a purpose, we are not aware of any free 3rd party Dynamic DNS resolution modules that work with Stream. There is however a way to use essentially the same method as used with the Nginx HTTP Proxy, by using the Nginx Stream Map directive. Above is the relevant configuration file snippet. **This configuration snippet requires that you have a base nginx.conf configuration already setup. Included in the example are the portions of the configuration that should be present within the Nginx “stream” directive. ***Please keep in mind the following facts: 1) Fail-over / Load Balancing behavior works differently then standard Nginx upstreams. Instead of using Nginx upstream load balancing or Passive health-checks, Load Balancing and Redundancy should be handled by the CNAME DNS service itself; Nginx “Upstream” directives are not used in this case, so there is no way to mark a server as down. Since there is more then one worker process in any deployed configuration, Round Robin DNS , where a Nameserver lookup returns more then one resulting record can be used to perform load balancing. 2) Each Nginx “Worker” will perform DNS lookups for requests handled by that worker. This means that if you have 20 worker processes , all 20 will be performing DNS lookups and caching the results , holding the results in memory for the DNS Cache/TTL configured using the Nginx “resolver” directive. You may want to use a local DNS server or caching resolver in order to lower the number of DNS queries made. Scott Girbav DOSarrest Internet Security Senior Network Security Engineer Source: https://www.dosarrest.com/ddos-blog/nginx-with-stream-module-dynamic-upstream-cname/

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Nginx with Stream Module Dynamic Upstream CNAME

33% of businesses hit by DDoS attack in 2017, double that of 2016

Distributed Denial of Service attacks are on the rise this year, and used to gain access to corporate data and harm a victim’s services, according to a Kaspersky Lab report. Cybercriminals are increasingly turning to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) this year, as 33% of organizations faced such an attack in 2017—up from just 17% in 2016, according to a new report from Kaspersky Lab. These cyber attacks are hitting businesses of all sizes: Of those affected, 20% were very small businesses, 33% were SMBs, and 41% were enterprises. Half of all businesses reported that the frequency and complexity of DDoS attacks targeting organizations like theirs is growing every year, highlighting the need for more awareness and protection against them, according to Kaspersky Lab. Of the companies that were hit in 2016, 82% said that they faced more than one DDoS attack. At this point in 2017, 76% of those hit said they had faced at least one attack. Cybercriminals use DDoS attacks to gain access to valuable corporate data, as well as to cripple a victim’s services, Kaspersky Lab noted. These attacks often result in serious disruption of business: Of the organizations hit by DDoS attacks this year, 26% reported a significant decrease in performance of services, and 14% reported a failure of transactions and processes in affected services. Additionally, some 53% of companies reported that DDoS attacks against them were used as a smokescreen to cover up other types of cybercrime. Half (50%) of these respondents said that the attack hid a malware infection, 49% said that it masked a data leak or theft, 42% said that it was used to cover up a network intrusion or hacking, and 26% said that it was hiding financial theft, Kaspersky Lab found. These results are part of Kaspersky Lab’s annual IT Security Risks survey, which included responses from more than 5,200 representatives of small, medium, and large businesses from 29 countries. “The threat of being hit by a DDoS attack – either standalone or as part of a greater attack arsenal – is showing no signs of diminishing,” said Kirill Ilganaev, head of Kaspersky DDoS protection at Kaspersky Lab, in a press release. “It’s not a case of if an organization will be hit, but when. With the problem growing and affecting every type and size of company, it is important for organizations to protect their IT infrastructure from being infiltrated and keep their data safe from attack.” Want to use this data in your next business presentation? Feel free to copy and paste these top takeaways into your next slideshow. 33% of organizations experienced a DDoS attack in 2017, compared to 17% in 2016. -Kaspersky Lab, 2017 Of organizations hit by DDoS attacks, 20% were very small businesses, 33% were SMBs, and 41% were enterprises. -Kaspersky Lab, 2017 53% of companies reported that DDoS attacks against them were used as a smokescreen to cover up other types of cybercrime, including malware, data leaks, and financial theft. -Kaspersky Lab, 2017 Source: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/33-of-businesses-hit-by-ddos-attack-in-2017-double-that-of-2016/

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33% of businesses hit by DDoS attack in 2017, double that of 2016