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New White House petition seeks to legitimize Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

This week, a petition was filed on the White House’s “We the People” website that aims to legitimize the use of distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) as a legitimate form of protest. “It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any ‘occupy,’ protest,” the petition states. “Instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time. As part of this petition, those who have been jailed for DDoS should be immediately released and have anything regarding a DDoS, that is on their ‘records,’ cleared.” Some have speculated that Anonymous is behind the petition—but Anons aren’t the only one making this argument: Evgeny Morozov, a Belarus-born tech author, scholar, and journalist made a similar case back in December 2010. However, he later warned: “Declaring that DDoS is a form of civil disobedience is not the same as proclaiming that such attacks are always effective or likely to contribute to the goals of openness and transparency pursued by Anonymous and WikiLeaks. Legitimacy is not the same thing as efficacy, even though the latter can boost the former. In fact, the proliferation of DDoS may lead to a crackdown on Internet freedom, as governments seek to establish tighter control over cyberspace.” The White House’s “We the People” website opened in 2011 and allows anyone to submit a petition to the government on any topic. If a petition gets 25,000 signatures or more, the Obama Administration will be compelled to provide a formal response. Most responses have been fairly mild, however—save releasing the White House beer recipe in late 2012. Citizens have used the system to criticize its “vapid” responses, to challenge Transportation Security Administration policy, and to encourage the president to veto SOPA, among other things. Still, as of this writing, the DDoS petition only has around 1,255 signatures—23,745 to go. Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/new-white-house-petition-seeks-to-legitimize-ddos-attacks/

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New White House petition seeks to legitimize Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on Major Banks Causing Problems for Customers

The websites of major U.S. banks are facing a new round of cyber attacks linked to the same group responsible for similar assaults earlier this year. The latest attacks started last week and have hit Bank of America Corp., SunTrust Banks Inc. (STI), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) and PNC Financial Services Group Inc. (PNC), according to two executives at companies providing security to some of the targeted banks, who asked for anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss clients and didn’t want their companies to become targets of computer assaults. PNC was under attack today, the executives said. A group calling itself Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters announced plans to attack banks in a Dec. 10 statement posted on the website pastebin.com. The same group claimed responsibility for a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in September and October that flooded bank websites with Internet traffic and caused disruptions and slowdowns for online customers. “The purpose of it is to try to disrupt or stop online banking access,” said Bill Nelson, president of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which disseminates cyber threat information to the financial services industry. “There are some outages occasionally, but it hasn’t prevented customers from transacting business.” The Izz ad-Din group has said in Internet postings that the cyber attacks are in response to a video uploaded to Google Inc. (GOOG)’s YouTube ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad and offending some Muslims. Multiple Targets The current attacks, which began last week, involve the same tactics used in the earlier assault, harnessing commercial servers to pump traffic at bank websites and attacking applications including security devices such as firewalls or intrusion-detection systems, said Carl Herberger, a vice president at Radware Ltd. (RDWR), a Tel Aviv-based network security provider that is working with some of the banks. While the attackers targeted one bank per day in the previous campaign, they are hitting multiple banks in a single day this time, Herberger said. PNC, in a statement posted on its website, said it’s aware of the potential cyber threat, which could “make it difficult for our customers to log onto online banking.” “Please be assured that PNC’s website is protected by sophisticated encryption strategies that shield customer information and accounts,” the statement reads. “We have no information regarding timing, duration or intensity of this potential threat.” Slow Access Wells Fargo said its website was experiencing an unusually high volume of traffic, creating slow or intermittent access for some customers. “The vast majority of customers are not impacted, but for those who are, we encourage them to access their accounts through our stores, ATMs or by phone as we work to resolve the issue,” according to a statement e-mailed yesterday by Bridget Braxton, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman. Mark T. Pipitone, a Bank of America spokesman, declined to comment, as did Tom Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan. The attackers are changing their “signatures,” or techniques, every 7 to 10 minutes, requiring constant monitoring, said Scott Hammack, chief executive officer of Prolexic Technologies, a Hollywood, Florida-based company that provides protection from DDoS attacks. DDoS Attacks Denial-of-service attacks have long been a favored tactic of hacker-activists, and software kits to mount such assaults are available for purchase on the black market, Meaghan Molloy, a senior threat analyst at Mandiant Corp., an Alexandria, Virginia-based information-security firm, said in an e-mail. While the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters group said the attacks are in retaliation for the YouTube video, “it’s worth noting” that the Federal Bureau of Investigation last year warned that DDoS attacks were being used to deflect attention from fraudulent wire transfers from compromised bank accounts, Molloy said. Banks targeted in the current attacks are working with Internet-service providers and the U.S. government to share information on the tactics and techniques of the attackers, said Nelson, of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-20/major-banks-under-renewed-cyber-attack-targeting-websites.html

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Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on Major Banks Causing Problems for Customers

National banking regulator advises on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack deluge

The regulator for national banks issued an alert Friday about the apparent uptick in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks being waged against financial institutions. The note from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which was addressed to the heads of national banks, federal branches and agencies, technology service providers and other related organizations, described how a recent wave of DDoS attacks are disrupting the availability of some bank websites. The spate seemed to kick off in early fall, and many top banks are still experiencing on-and-off attacks. “Each of these groups had different objectives for conducting these attacks, ranging from garnering public attention to diverting bank resources while simultaneous online attacks were underway and intended to enable fraud or steal proprietary information,” the alert said. The bulletin recommends that banks maintain a “heightened sense of awareness regarding these attacks” and ensure they are prepared to deal with them. That includes appropriating staff and third-party contractors to help thwart the attacks; implementing an incident response plan across various departments; and sharing information among affected organizations. In addition, because often the attacks target banks’ service providers, the OCC suggests that financial institutions review the response capabilities of their ISPs and web-hosting vendors. The alert also encourages banks that are sustaining a DDoS attack to remain in communication with customers, conveying any risks they face, as well as safeguards they can take. The OCC said banks should view their security in terms of risk management. But the alert also reminded institutions that they are obligated to follow the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) guidelines, which were updated in 2011 to address corporate account takeovers. Often, DDoS attacks run cover for attackers who are simultaneously logged in to victims’ bank accounts while fraudulently transferring out money from their accounts. Avivah Litan of research firm Gartner said in a blog post Friday that the alert shows the OCC is taking the threat seriously, and this will likely result in increased regulatory enforcement. “Some banks do spend enough on security – but many do not,” she wrote. “This will help ensure that all – and not just some – of the banks regulated by the OCC at least, are putting the requisite resources into defending against DDoS attacks and their attending damage.” Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/national-banking-regulator-advises-on-ddos-deluge/article/273769/

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National banking regulator advises on Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack deluge

Details of the complexity of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

DDoS‘s popularity as an attack method can be explained by how important availability is to most organizations’ ability to function. Availability is as critical to an organization today as electricity. If an organization is taken offline, it can lose the ability to generate revenue from its customers, or the ability to access cloud-based data and applications. And, if publicized, the downtime can damage its reputation and brand. Arbor Networks’ data, gathered from more than 240 service provider deployments, shows that, without question, DDoS attacks are getting bigger. Much bigger. Consider the statistics: The average attack in September was 1.67 Gbps, a 72-percent growth from September 2011. The number of mid-range attacks, ranging 2-10 Gbps, also has increased, up 14.35% so far in 2012. Very large attacks, 10 Gbps+, were up 90 percent during 2011. The largest attack this year measured 100.84 Gbps. Hackers seek out pain points for an organization, like maintaining availability, and look to exploit weaknesses in infrastructure and existing security defenses. From that perspective, DDoS is a great tool. There are three main categories of DDoS attack: Volumetric attacks These attacks attempt to consume the bandwidth either within the target network/service, or between the target network/service and the rest of the internet. These attacks are simply about causing congestion. Volumetric attacks first emerged in 2001 when Microsoft, eBay and Yahoo were taken offline by what back then was considered large attacks in the 300 Mbps range – a relatively low volume attack. With DDoS attacks now exceeding 100 Gbps, internet service providers are faced with new challenges of how to protect their networks and infrastructure. TCP state-exhaustion attacks These attacks attempt to consume the connection state tables that are present in many infrastructure components, such as load balancers, firewalls and the application servers themselves. Even high-capacity devices capable of maintaining state on millions of connections can be taken down by these attacks. Application layer attacks In 2010, there was a dramatic shift in DDoS, from primarily large volumetric attacks to smaller, harder-to-detect application-layer attacks that target some aspect of an application or service at Layer 7. These are the most sophisticated, stealthy attacks, as they can be very effective with as few as one attacking machine generating a low traffic rate (this makes these attacks very difficult to proactively detect and mitigate). ** Each of these attack types present unique challenges to network operators. The easiest attacks to mitigate are volumetric, which can be effectively mitigated by cloud-based managed security services. Attacks targeting existing infrastructure, and those that are “low-and-slow” targeting applications, are the most difficult to identify and mitigate. What makes DDoS such an effective weapon in recent years is the increasing complexity of attacks, the blending of attack types, targets and techniques. Take, for example, the recent attacks on financial institutions in the United States. These attacks used a combination of attack tools with vectors mixing application-layer attacks on HTTP, HTTPS and DNS with volumetric attack traffic on a variety of protocols including TCP, UDP, ICMP and others. The other unique characteristic of these attacks was the targeting of multiple companies in the same vertical at very high bandwidth. Compromised PHP web application servers were used as bots in the attacks. Additionally, many WordPress sites, often using the out-of-date TimThumb plug-in, were compromised around the same time. Joomla and other PHP-based applications were also leveraged. The attackers uploaded PHP WebShells to unmaintained servers and then used those shells to further deploy attack tools. The attackers connected to the tools either directly or through intermediate servers/proxies/scripts, and therefore the concept of command-and-control did not apply in the usual manner. This complex, rapidly evolving attack vector requires purpose-built tools, both on-premise and cloud-based, to provide comprehensive protection against both large attacks and those that target the application layer. And until we see pervasive deployment of best practices defenses, we can expect to see DDoS in the headlines for years to come. Winston Churchill offered some great advice that IT security professionals should keep top of mind as they adapt their defense to the threat landscape, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” Source: http://www.scmagazine.com/its-the-complexity-not-the-size-that-makes-ddos-effective/article/273775/

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Details of the complexity of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

Wells Fargo Still Dealing with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack

Hacktivists’ phase 2 distributed-denial-of-service attacks against U.S. banks appeared to subside Dec. 19. Only Wells Fargo reported online access issues, but the bank pointed out that outages were limited. A day earlier, the bank reported a more extensive DDoS hit. The hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters Group on Dec. 18 posted an update on Pastebin , saying targeted banks could expect more distributed-denial-of-service attacks this week, resembling the magnitude of attacks waged against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Financial Services, U.S. Bancorp and SunTrust Bank a week earlier The group, however, did not name its targets in the Dec. 18 posting. But based on outage reports confirmed Dec. 18 and Dec. 19 by Wells Fargo, the bank apparently was one of those that Izz ad-Din al-Qassam has chosen to attack this time around. Wells Fargo spokeswoman Sara Hawkins said some bank customers may have experienced issues accessing their online accounts throughout the day Dec. 19. “We’re not seeing widespread impact, but we do recognize that some customers may have intermittent access to our website,” she said. On Dec. 18, however, Hawkins said the bank was seeing heavier than typical traffic. “We’re seeing an unusually high volume of traffic, which is creating slow or intermittent access to our website for some online customers,” she said. But none of the five banks named as targets in Izz ad-Din al-Qassam’s Dec. 11 announcement of the launch of a phase 2 DDoS campaign reported similar issues. Ten banks were targeted in the first campaign of DDoS attacks, which ran from mid-September until mid-October. Those banks included the five noted above as well as Wells Fargo, Regions Bank, HSBC Holdings, BB&T Corp. and Capital One. Among these, only Wells has reported additional outages allegedly linked to Phase 2. The others confirmed Dec. 19 that their sites remained unaffected. The hacktivist group claims it will continue its attacks on U.S. banks until a YouTube movie trailer, deemed to be offensive to Muslims, is removed. The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center on Dec. 12 issued an advisory , outlining precautions institutions should take as they prepare for more attacks. The FS-ISCAC notes that hacktivists’ warning that the second phase will be more severe should be heeded. For DDoS protection for your eCommerce site click here . Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/wells-fargo-still-dealing-ddos-a-5370

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Wells Fargo Still Dealing with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack

To the Rescue: A Fully Managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection Solution

With its hosting DNA, DOSarrest understands the challenges of dealing with a distribute denial of service (DDoS) attack in a data center. We know, for example, that for every minute your website is reeling from a DDoS attack, thousands – or even hundreds of thousands-of dollars can be lost in the form of missed sales and credibility with your customers. In addition to lost revenue, you risk future losses due to the negative impact to your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking caused by a prolonged outage – a penalty from which it can take months to recover. To help avoid these problems, DOSarrest designed a cloud-based mitigation service that provides carrier-grade service and leaves your Web infrastructure intact. Because we created a multilayered defense system in each of its geo-distributed mitigation centers, we can handle the large Layer 2 and Layer 3 attacks all the way to the most sophisticated application layer incursions with relative ease. Expecting the Unexpected Given the relatively low barrier of entry for the committed attacker, a DDoS attack can be launched at anytime for a variety of reasons, unbeknownst to the victim. Because of this uncertainty, we had to design a mitigation service that could be implemented within minutes. By using a distributed architecture, we can provide both DDoS protection and added website performance for our customers. But this distribution presented some challenges we had to overcome. Given that we broadcast our customers’ content from several locations between Europe and North America, we needed to know how each location was performing. Ensuring Total Stability and Performance To solve this problem we developed – and are now in the process of rolling out – DOSarrest External Monitoring Service (DEMS) , a completely separate website monitoring service designed to ensure the highest degree of stability and performance for all the geographic regions from which we broadcast. Even some of the world’s largest content-delivery networks don’t supply this information to their customers. With DEMS , we can provide the first fully managed DDoS protection service, backed by a team of engineers on duty 24/7/365 in our Security Operations Center, which is capable of detecting and thwarting an oncoming attack before it has any effect. Our philosophy is to resolve issues that may arise on the first call or e-mail from our customers. There are no auto-replies here, as an experienced engineer responds to every inquiry, normally within 10 minutes. Jag Bains, CTO at DOSarrest Internet Security . To read more about the InformationWeek DDoS Special Report, download it here: http://www.informationweek.com/gogreen/121112fs

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To the Rescue: A Fully Managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Protection Solution

4 Banks Respond to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Threats

The day after Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters announced plans to launch a second wave of distributed-denial-of-service attacks on five U.S. banks, SunTrust suffered intermittent outages and Bank of America and PNC said small numbers of their customers reported having trouble accessing their sites. But it remained unclear whether the problems were the result of an attack. U.S. Bank, which did not suffer any known outages or access issues, did, however, acknowledge that new attacks could be on the way. On Dec. 11, PNC used social media to warn consumers that site outages should be expected, but that account and online-banking credentials would remain secure. And one expert was advising banks to expect the worst, saying Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters’ second wave of attacks would likely be more fierce than the first. The online-monitoring site websitedown.com reported that about noon ET on Dec. 11, SunTrust Banks website suffered intermittent outages. But SunTrust executives declined to comment on the nature of the outages. BofA spokesman Mark Pipitone said that while BofA’s site suffered no overall outages, an isolated number of online-banking users reported problems accessing the site. “We’re aware of the reports of possible cyberattacks, and we’re monitoring our systems, which are fully operational,” Pipitone said in the early evening of Dec. 11. PNC spokeswoman Amy Vargo said some PNC customers may have experienced intermittent difficulty logging in on their first attempts. “We are aware of the situation and working to restore full access,” she said during the early evening of Dec. 11. “We are focused on minimizing disruption to our customers and will review the cause of this incident once full access is restored.” And U.S. Bank spokesman Tom Joyce told the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal that the bank is “taking all necessary steps” to prepare for more attacks. “It’s important to note that these denial-of-service attacks are designed to slow down banks’ websites and create a nuisance for consumers,” Joyce said. “Customers can be assured that their data and funds are secure.” The hacktivist group Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters named SunTrust, U.S. Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and PNC Financial Services Group as targets for its next wave of DDoS attacks. The group, in a Dec. 10 post on Pastebin , announced plans for what it portrays as “Phase 2 Operation Ababil” – a second campaign of attacks waged against leading U.S. banks to protest a YouTube movie trailer deemed offensive to Muslims. All five banks were targets – along with Wells Fargo, Capital One, Regions Bank, BB&T and HSBC – during the first wave of DDoS attacks , which ran from mid-September to mid-October. During that period, each bank’s website suffered intermittent outages of varying degrees. CapOne was the only institution targeted twice in the first wave (see CapOne Takes Second DDoS Hit ). PNC’s Communications Stand Out On Dec. 11, three of the five newly targeted banks were remaining quiet, declining to comment about the threat and steps they were taking, if any, to communicate with consumers about the expectation of more attacks. BofA acknowledged isolated reports from consumers who suffered difficulty logging in. PNC, the only bank to publicly outline details surrounding the DDoS attack it suffered in the first wave, however, immediately took steps to notify the public of the possibility for a second attack. Through Dec. 11 posts on the social-networking sites Facebook and Twitter , PNC forewarned online-banking customers that outages should be expected. “This potential threat could result in high volume of electronic traffic that may make it difficult for our customers to log onto online banking,” the bank stated on its Facebook page and website . “Please be assured that PNC’s website is protected by sophisticated encryption strategies that shield customer information and accounts. We have no information regarding timing, duration or intensity of this potential threat. Please continue to follow our page for additional updates.” Fiercer Attacks Ahead? Why these five banks have been targeted for a second attack is not clear. But John Walker , an independent security professional in London and member of the European Network and Information Security Agency’s security experts team, says banks should expect the new attacks to be more fierce than the first, as the hacktivists promised in their Dec. 10 post. “By showing the game can be taken to ever-increasing levels starts to focus the mind of the victim organizations as to their frailty,” Walker says. “They [the hacktivists] are, I believe, demonstrating their power.” Walker says banks learned valuable lessons during the first wave, which will provide them with tools to better prepare this time around. But they should not be overly confident in their abilities to stave off outages. “This style of attack has not even matured yet, and there is more to come,” he says. “The time has arrived for … more techno-savvy security – and more honesty in the boardroom – as to real-time security exposure before the event, not just after it has impacted the business.” Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/webinars/new-wave-ddos-attacks-how-to-prepare-respond-w-308

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4 Banks Respond to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Threats

British student found guilty of Anonymous PayPal Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

A British student has been convicted over his role in a series of denial of service attacks against PayPal, which cost the payment firm £3.5m. Christopher Weatherhead was part of an Anonymous gang that attacked PayPal in protest at the firm’s decision not to handle payments being made to whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, in an attack dubbed ‘Operation Payback’. According to multiple reports, the jury hearing the case took little more than two hours to reach their guilty verdict. Three other members of the gang had already pleaded guilty but Weatherhead had argued he had not taken part in the attacks, claiming his role had been limited to operating Anonymous chat rooms. The judge presiding over the case, Peter Testar, told the defendants that he regarded the offences as serious. Weatherhead, who was a student at Northampton University at the time of the attacks, was found guilty under the Criminal Law Act 1977, and could face jail time as a result of the guilty verdict. The Metropolitan Police arrested five youths in 2011 in connection with Operation Payback, while other suspected members were arrested by the Dutch authorities. Operation Payback had initially begun as a protest against the music industry’s anti-piracy stance, but the focus changed after Wikileaks published a series of leaked diplomatic memos. Several financial services firms including PayPal, MasterCard and Visa withdrew services from Wikileaks, and as a result drew the ire of the Anonymous activists. Source: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2230251/british-student-found-guilty-of-anonymous-paypal-ddos-attacks

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British student found guilty of Anonymous PayPal Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

Hacktivist Hints at New Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

The hacktivists are now letting their words speak for their actions. For the third time in one month, a source claiming to be part of the self-proclaimed hacktivist group known as Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters has granted an interview to discuss the wave of high-profile distributed denial of service attacks on U.S. banks. During the recent interview with Flashpoint Global Partners , an international consulting firm, the hacktivist representative said more attacks would be waged and that methods of attacks would diverge, until a YouTube movie trailer deemed by the group to cast Islam in a negative light is removed from the Internet. “We have done what we had promised,” the source said. “If the film isn’t removed, we’ll use our other abilities according to the new conditions.” No New Attacks Since Sept. 18, the group has taken credit for attacks on 10 leading U.S. banks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC, U.S. Bank, CapitalOne, HSBC, SunTrust, Regions and BB&T. No new attacks have been claimed by the group since mid-October. In early November, Webster Bank and Zions Bancorp also suffered from DDoS attacks, which caused intermittent outages to their online-banking sites for several hours. While the attacks were not linked directly to Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, Zions spokesman Rob Brough said the bank did not know who was behind the attack. “There’s no way for us to know if the attack against us was just the next one [in the series of attacks waged by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam] or if it was just a coincidence,” Brough said. “What I can tell you is that we were well-prepared because of the other incidents. When we recognized that it was a DDoS attack, we had plans in place.” DDoS and Fraud? The attacks have been concerning for two reasons: customer frustration with online-banking inaccessibility and the possibility of fraud being perpetrated in the background. On Sept. 17, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, along with the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, issued a warning about DDoS being waged to mask incidents of account takeover occurring simultaneously. In their alert, the FBI and FS-ISAC note recent attacks that linked DDoS to fraud. “In some of the incidents, before and after unauthorized transactions occurred, the bank or credit union suffered a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against their public Web site(s) and/or Internet Banking URL,” the alert states. “The DDoS attacks were likely used as a distraction for bank personnel to prevent them from immediately identifying a fraudulent transaction, which in most cases is necessary to stop the wire transfer” (see High Risk: What Alert Means to Banks ). So far, no bank has reported fraud linked to DDoS attacks waged by Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, but security experts question what might really be taking place in the background. Questioning Consultants’ Competency The latest interview with Izz ad-Din al-Qassam marks the third time a member claiming affiliation with the group has spoken out on the attacks. On Oct. 31, ABC News was granted an e-mail interview, and on Nov. 7 technology news site Softpedia was given e-mailed insights. During all interviews, alleged members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam group stressed the group was not supported by any nation-state, government or other hacktivist group, and that all of its members were merely tech-savvy volunteers with a common mission to see the YouTube video removed (see Hacktivist Speaks Out About DDoS ). In the most recent interview, the respondent defends Izz ad-Din al-Qassam’s purpose as well as the efficacy of its attacks. “Many of [the] technical comments during the attacks have made us doubtful about [the] technical competence of American companies’ security consultants,” the respondent said, when asked by Flashpoint if the botnets it used also have attacked web-hosting companies and Internet service providers. “Many of [the] technical statements about this case are not scientific, reliable or significant,” the source added. Break Suspicious, But Expected An Oct. 23 Pastebin post notes the group’s plans to temporarily halt attacks in honor of a three-day Muslim holiday. Pastebin is the public online forum Izz ad-Din al-Qassam has used to communicate updates about its attacks. The continued break from attacks is curious, says Mike Smith , a security evangelist and DDoS specialist at Web security provider Akamai Technologies. It’s just difficult to know who is behind which attacks, he says. Speculating is pointless, he says. What is clear, however, is that banking institutions and other organizations are continually targeted, and staying ahead of these attacks, regardless of who wages them, is a necessity. “We get two or more large attacks per week against our entire customer base and countless smaller ones,” Smith says. But connecting those to one hacktivist group over another is nearly impossible, he adds. “Some of those targets are financial services, some are not.” Information-sharing shortens response time, he adds. “It’s always tough to be the first target when a new attacker or technique appears because you have to work your way to a diagnosis and implement blocking: things that take time,” Smith says. “However, good incident managers and organizations doing threat intelligence share what they know with each other, so that during subsequent attacks, although of the same magnitude and lethality, the targeted organizations know what indicators there are to the start of the attack and what techniques worked the best in previous attacks.” For DDoS protection against your eCommerce site click here . Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/hacktivist-hints-at-new-ddos-attacks-a-5325/op-1

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Hacktivist Hints at New Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks

Protecting Your Network Against Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ Attacks

As leaders in their field, IT managers are tasked with the burden of not only managing but protecting company networks. Dedicated servers can be adversely affected by DDoS attackers, as their firewalls can be penetrated and flooded with malicious communication requests. Before assessing how you can prevent DDoS attacks it is first important to understand what they are and where they come from. What Are DDoS Attacks? A DDoS attack attempts to render a network or machine inaccessible or unresponsive for any considerable length of time. DDoS attacks typically saturate a network with requests as to slow, disrupt or obstruct communication from the intended user. In some cases, a DDoS attack may overwhelm network firewalls, leaving the problem up to IP providers to fix. Typical symptoms may include the following: a high volume of spam emails, in-accessibility of websites or services or exceptionally slow network performance. Either way, a DDoS attack can adversely affect business by bringing down a website, company application or cloud based computing platform. Here are a few suggestions to go about mitigating the risk associated with DDoS attacks: Preventative Measures Against Attack Properly setup of network firewalls are a must. These days, modern firewalls can be configured to deny unusual protocols from un-identified IP addresses. For instance, if your network firewall is configured to block traffic from sources it can’t identify, it may drop any or all illegitimate service requests as to maintain a normalized bandwidth threshold. Though IP bottlenecks are not always a symptom of DDoS attacks, configuring a firewall to block traffic incoming from specific ports is a form of preventative maintenance. As stated earlier, DDoS attackers may flood a system as to render it unresponsive. Rate limiting switches detect incoming traffic and may filter or slow IPs in such a way that prevents them from flooding the system. Many switches have wide-area-networks fail overs, which adjust incoming IP filtering thresholds automatically. Again, it is important to configure these systems correctly in order for them to remain effective. If system upgrades are in order then IT managers need to weigh the cost against the risk posed by DDoS attacks. Costs To Consider Personnel Costs – If attacked, how many IT workers will it take to address and remedy the problem? Support Calls – Do you really want to be tied up on the phone calling tech support? Factor in the time spent at the help desk Lost Business – If a DDoS attack causes downtime to your website, how much revenue may be lost? Lost Customers – Investing in network protection means you are also investing in consumer confidence. How many customers may be lost due to downtime. Brand Reputation – When network outages occur, brands may suffer damage to their reputation. It is important to consider this last factor. Lastly, it is important to remember that DDoS attacks may also occur by accident. Some sites may experience a denial of service when they experience a high amount of traffic. In any case where a popular website links to a trending event, traffic may suddenly spike creating a unintentional denial of service. Focus your energies on preventing the malicious attacks and it’ll be smooth sailing for your business or enterprise. For DDoS protection against your eCommerce site click here . Source: http://www.colocationamerica.com/blog/protecting-your-network-against-ddos-attacks.htm

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Protecting Your Network Against Distributed Denial of Service ‘DDoS’ Attacks