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66 year old British Rock Guitarist jailed for taking part in 2010 Anonymous DDoS campaign called Operation Payback

Geoffrey ‘Jake’ Commander, a 66-years-old British rock guitarist and part of the Electric Light Band Orchestra (ELO), has been given a a jail sentence for joining the popular online hacktivists collective ‘Anonymous’ and taking part in the famous Operation Payback campaign in 2010 which brought down many financial websites. Washington Times quotes that, “Geoffrey “Jake” Commander, a rock guitarist who has played with the Electric Light Orchestra, George Harrison and Elton John, among others, walked unnoticed through the halls of the U.S. District Court in Alexandria early Friday afternoon” The sentence was given by the Alexandria District Court on Friday following the admission of guilty plea by ‘Jake.’ The ELO guitarist admitted to his involvement in the Anonymous operation at the hearing before the sentence was pronounced. He also promised the Judge never to return to the United States after his release. The authorities said that he could serve only ten days in prison, ‘Jake’ was earlier facing a likely prison sentence of ten years jail time in a federal prison. Operation Payback The Anonymous campaign called Operation Payback was a coordinated attack against the opponents of Internet piracy. Anonymous started the Operation Payback started as retaliation to DDoS attacks on torrent sites by anti piracy lobby. The Anonymous then allegedly took down many anti-piracy websites all over the world through coordinated DDoS attacks. After Wikileaks published the leaks of Diplomatic cables in December 2010, some banks withdrew banking facilities given to Wikileaks. Anonymous then turned the Operation Payback against such banks which had withdrawn the banking facilities. Geoffrey’s Role in Operation Payback. Reports indicate that Geoffery took part in the IRC chat administered by members of Anonymous collective and joined the 1000 members of Anonymous to launch a DDoS attack against MasterCard. He was alleged part of the Operation Payback for over 3 hours in which he he contributed to the amplification of the attack by using the LOIC (low-orbit Ion cannon) tool on his PC. MasterCard had reported later that it recorded a $1 million loss due to this DDoS attack. Geoffery was arrested in 2013 after he returned to the United States with his family, 3 years after the attack. Source: http://www.techworm.net/2014/12/66-year-old-british-rock-guitarist-jailed-taking-part-2010-anonymous-ddos-attack.html

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66 year old British Rock Guitarist jailed for taking part in 2010 Anonymous DDoS campaign called Operation Payback

Carbon Poker Crash and Possible DDoS Attacks Highlight Need for Legalization

Recent happenings at what was considered one of the more reliable and trustworthy offshore online poker rooms, Carbon Poker, is simply furthering the case for regulated online poker in the United States. Anyone calling for a ban of online gambling in the U.S. should pay particular attention to what has taken place at Carbon Poker over the past couple weeks, as these are the types of online poker operators that will survive a federal online gambling ban. If Sheldon Adelson gets his way, regulated sites like WSOP.com would be forced to shut down and sites like Carbon would continue to fill the void. In the past couple weeks the site experienced several significant problems that have left many players concerned about the safety of their accounts and their personal information, as well as with the overall integrity of the games at the site. Server crash leads to data breach The first issue occurred during one of the biggest tournament days in Carbon Poker’s history. On November 23, the Main Event of the Carbon Poker Online Poker Series, along with dozens of other tournaments at the site, were running when the Carbon Poker servers’ crashed, bringing everything to a screeching halt. Site-wide server crashes are rare, but they do happen. Unfortunately for Carbon, this was not a typical server crash, which is bad enough in its own right. According to multiple reports by poker players on social media sites and on the poker forums, the server crash not only caused widespread disconnections, but also caused hole cards to change mid-hand for players still able to log in and play, and even more worrisome, customers were inexplicably able to gain access to other players’ accounts when they tried to log back on to the site. Players reported that this first of its kind (to my knowledge) technical glitch, not only allowed them access to other Carbon Poker’s players accounts, but they were capable of gambling with those funds (including players that were active on the site when the servers crashed), as well as being able to see the accountholders sensitive personal information. A DDoS superuser? As concerning as the server crash and data breach were, things got even worse this weekend when, after several days of unexplained and consistent disconnect issues, widespread rumors began to take hold that targeted DDoS attacks were behind the ongoing technical issues, and were being used to win pots. Following pages of frustration over the ongoing disconnects, the DDoS rumors took hold with an out of left field (something that is not uncommon on 2+2) accusation: I found the hacker that is disconnecting the server. He builds big pots and once he min-raises he crashes the server and scoops the pot. His username is L4ss3m4jj4n. He did it to me a few times and took quite a bit from me at PLO. I then followed him and watched him do it to others. I emailed support so lets see what happens.” And from there it escalated: “Guys, I would normally say this is just somebody coming up with a wild conspiracy theory, but this is serious, everybody should open up this table, it’s table 24 in the $215/125k, something is super super fishy about the way L4ss3m4jj4n is playing, every disconnect has benefited him so far, it seems too obvious if you watch it for a few of the disconnects.” “second time i’m witnessing him betting in big pot and a disconnect taking place.” “Kh8s9d7h board he checks, phat1cat bets 1888 into 3750, l4ss3m4jj4n minraises to 3776 and disconnect.” In addition to the forum gossip, the potential DDoS superuser was also discussed/mentioned on social media by well-known poker players and poker commentators. Click here and also here. As the story began to unfold, over 100 players started monitoring this person’s play as it was being live-streamed on Twitch.com, and at the same time were furiously contacting Carbon Poker customer support en masse to have something done about the situation. You can read a good summary (for those that can’t handle 200 pages of 2+2 posts) of what took place at Carbon Poker/Merge Gaming here. It should be stated, that whether this was a concerted DDOS attack by some nefarious player(s), or if the sites are simply experiencing ongoing technical issues is unclear. What is clear is that unregulated sites make it much harder for players to be treated fairly and properly compensated when these things occur. It also shows the inability of players on unregulated sites to take their grievances to a regulatory body that oversees the site. The important takeaway is, if these types of issues are occurring at Carbon Poker, considered one of the top unregulated online poker sites still serving the U.S. market, what is happening at the other, more suspect, operators? Source: http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/networks-and-rooms/12083-carbon-poker-crash-and-possible-ddos-attacks-highlight-need-for-legalization/

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Carbon Poker Crash and Possible DDoS Attacks Highlight Need for Legalization

Hacker Group ‘Lizard Squad’ Hits Xbox Live and PlayStation Network with DDoS Attacks

A hacker group used distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against two giants in the gaming industry, causing widespread service outages among users. First, Lizard Squad, the self-professed “king of DDoS,” took down Xbox Live early last week. The ensuing outage lasted all of Monday night, with Microsoft support announcing that service had been restored on Tuesday. Shortly after the service interruption occurred, Lizard Squad tweeted “Xbox Live #offline” and announced that they would gift Microsoft a “wonderful” Christmas present this year. It would appear the group is living up to its promise. Later on Friday, Lizard Squad brought down Xbox Live again with another DDoS attack. Xbox 360 users were disproportionately affected by the group’s second attack against Microsoft that week, though Xbox One also experienced some problems. Then late last night on Sunday, Lizard Squad shifted its focus to Sony, which is still in the process of investigating a massive hack, and used a DDoS attack to bring down Sony Entertainment’s PlayStation Network (PSN). The group has also claimed responsibility for bringing down Sony’s online PlayStation store, replacing the homepage with the text, “Page Not Found! It’s not you. It’s the Internet’s Fault.” While service has been restored to PSN, the PlayStation store outage is still ongoing as of this writing. Sony is no stranger to Lizard Squad. The hacker group attacked the tech giant in August earlier this year, causing a massive service interruption among North American users. The group shortly thereafter tweeted that explosives were aboard an American Airlines flight on which Sony Entertainment President John Smedley was flying, causing the plane to be diverted. These recent attacks against Xbox Live and Sony are just the beginning, according to Lizard Squad. On Christmas Day, the hacker group has announced that it will bring down Xbox Live, only this time, it promises that the attack will irreversibly cripple the service, causing the outage to last “forever.” Whether the hacker group makes good on this promise remains to be seen. At any event, we can certainly expect additional attacks from Lizard Squad before this holiday season is over. Source: http://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/top-security-stories/hacker-group-lizard-squad-hits-xbox-live-and-playstation-network-with-ddos-attacks/

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Hacker Group ‘Lizard Squad’ Hits Xbox Live and PlayStation Network with DDoS Attacks

Fort Lauderdale Website Under DDoS Attack Again

The City of Fort Lauderdale announced Wednesday that it may have to disconnect its Internet service at different points due to another attempt at a denial of service attack on the city’s website. Fort Lauderdale recently saw its home page and the website for Mayor Jack Seiler both go through denial of service attacks at the hands of Anonymous. The hacker collective launched the DDoS attack to try to change the homeless feeding ordinance and other city rules. The Anonymous DDoS attack lasted for several hours during the first attack which kept the home page inaccessible for several hours. The city said Wednesday that it is working with its Internet Service Provider to mitigate risk and safeguard the system. However, the city said there may be service interruptions and intermittent website performance due to the possible new attack. Source: http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Fort-Lauderdale-Website-Under-Attack-Again-284672121.html

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Fort Lauderdale Website Under DDoS Attack Again

The Conversation hit by DDoS Attack

Academia-meets-journalism website the Conversation was hit by a denial of service hacker attack this morning, preventing it from posting new articles or sending its daily email for around eight hours. The cyber attack was targeted at the site’s domain name server DNSimple and affected hundreds of sites across the world. It is believed to be related to the Cyber Monday sales which were going on in the US and UK at the time. In a note in today’s newsletter, sent at 2pm as opposed to the regular 6am, managing editor Misha Ketchell wrote: “Apologies for the long delay in sending today’s newsletter. Our website has been down since shortly after 6am thanks to a “denial of service” attack on our domain name server, DNSimple. “If that’s got you scratching your head, you’re not alone. A denial of service attack is easy enough to understand: it’s where malevolent hackers inundate a server with so many requests it ceases to function. “What’s confounding is why anyone would do something so pointless. In this case we think we’ve been caught up in a targeted attack to coincide with the Cyber Monday sales events in the US, as David Glance explains here. “For now the worst appears to be over and we are working on ways to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Thanks for your patience.” DNSimple is still currently experiencing issues across some of its domains due to the attacks, which are explained in more detail in a piece on The Conversation. Source: http://mumbrella.com.au/conversation-hit-denial-service-hackers-morning-265908

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The Conversation hit by DDoS Attack

Google reels under DDoS attack

Google, it seems, has the eye of Sauron upon it. About 10:30 am IST, all of the monolith’s services went offline, including Gmail and the all important Google search engine. Since then, services have been restored one at a time. Google search and Gmail were resurrected around 11:20 am. while Google Drive and Gmail Chat only made their way back around 11:42 am. Panic was rampant on Twitter, as more and more people discovered they couldn’t log on, but it seems to be settling down now. So why was #GoogleDown? Well according to Digital Attack Map, ironically also a Google property, points to a possible DDoS attack on Google’s servers. A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is when a malicious group uses multiple systems to bombard a server with unnecessary traffic, in an attempt to make it crash. No credit taken by any hacker group and no comment yet from Google, as of this time. Source: http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-google-reels-under-ddos-attack-2040211

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Google reels under DDoS attack

SK Internet down after DDoS Attack

SK Broadband, one of the largest providers of broadband Internet access in Korea, was attacked by the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) over the weekend, disconnecting its Internet services for about an hour. DDoS is a kind of cyberattack in which multiple compromised systems are used to target a single network or a machine and make it unavailable to users. On Saturday at 10:55 a.m., the traffic on SK Broadband’s DNS server soared up to 15 million packets per second (PPS), from its usual average of about 1 million PPS. PPS refers to the number of database transactions performed per second. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said it blocked the cyberattack on SK Broadband and a smaller attack on LG U+ with the help of the Korea Internet Security Agency (KISA) and was able to normalize the service in 70 minutes. SK Broadband users near Seocho and Dongjak distrcts in southern Seoul were without Internet from 10:55 a.m. until 12:05 p.m. on Saturday. There was also a mild attack on LG U+, the nation’s third-largest mobile carrier, but it did not have a noticeable effect on the carrier or its users, according to the ministry. The investigative team at the Science Ministry has confirmed 1,030 Internet Protocol addresses used in the DDoS attack and is analyzing the SK’s DNS server log. SK Broadband said it is planning to collect and analyze the malware codes used in the attack after it identified zombie PCs among the users. “It’s not the first time that a mobile carrier has been attacked by DDoS. We are investigating where the attack came from and the exact causes,” said Lim Young-seok, a manager at SK Broadband. “It could take a month, as in the case of previous cyberattacks on banks.” However, information security companies suggested that the DDoS attack on the mobile carrier and the Internet service provider could be a prelude to a larger cyberattack. Increased malware activity was recorded ahead of massive cyberattacks on three Korean television stations and a bank on March 20 and a June 25 attack on the Blue House website. Bitscan, a local securities company, warned that malicious links are at their most active point this year. “As malwares hover between wired and wireless networks, PCs and mobile devices that are vulnerable to cyberattacks will likely see huge damages,” said a spokesman for Bitscan. Source: http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/Article.aspx?aid=2997940

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SK Internet down after DDoS Attack

Oh Oh Oh, Tis the season for DDoS attacks

It’s that time of the year where some websites become extremely high valued targets. It happens every year around this time, this year has proven to be no exception. DOSarrest have seen in the past where some online merchants were completely devastated by DDoS attacks that can sometimes force them out of business. These unlucky merchants were down due to attacks that lasted for several days and all of their customers had made their urgent Christmas purchases on other sites. These are lost sales that will never return and to make things worse, the online merchant gets stuck with excess inventory that they can’t sell. Why does this happen at this time of the year ? The answer is simple its most likely your competition. What better way to punish your competitor, then to shut their doors during the busiest shopping time of the year. The importance of DDoS protection can save your business. You can’t afford it ? Think of the alternative, being down for 24-48 hours sometime between November 27 to December 15th. Could your business survive this ? These are all questions to ask yourself. Approximately 30% of DOSarrests’ customers use the service as a back-up, should they experience a DDoS attack they use the service, when there is no attack they run directly off of their own server(s). Today one of their customers had an attack and contacted DOSarrest letting us know they needed help. Everything was already setup on DOSarrests’ side, fully customized and previously tested for them. Their 24/7 support team guided them through the steps to take and the customer was down for only 45 minutes. 45 minutes is a lot but it could of been 6 hours or longer if they didn’t have something already setup in advance. This particular customer already had a plan in place, he knew what he had to do and what not to do and was thrilled to not suffer some protracted outage. Some of the higher end online merchants will be ringing up $400,000/day in sales at this time of the year. Down or crippled for 6 hours would really hurt. Ask Santa for a DDoS protection plan this Holiday season, just in case the Grinch visits. Mark Teolis General Manager for DOSarrest Internet Security.

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Oh Oh Oh, Tis the season for DDoS attacks

What Can DDoS Attacks Mean for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

This weekend’s huge number of online shoppers could result in an influx of cyber crime. Two experts discuss how DDoS attacks can affect retailers and how marketers can prevent them. Online shopping is at an all-time high, with retailers expected to rake in more than $6.5 billion in revenue this weekend, the busiest of the year. But with all those people shopping, it’ll also be a busy weekend for the people who administer distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. “You can almost think of [DDoS attackers] as pirates,” explains Lisa Joy Rosner, chief marketing officer at Neustar, an information services and analytics company headquartered outside Washington. “What they do is they create this fake overload on your system and stuff all this fake traffic on your site.” Whether DDoS attacks are designed to get a ransom from site owners (“pay up and we’ll stop”) or create a diversion, allowing hackers to sneak in and install data-stealing malware while the attention is on the attack, they rose 71 percent from 2012 to 2013, according to Neustar’s annual impact report. More than 40 percent of the study’s respondents report losses of at least $1 million per day while their sites were slowed down. DDoS attacks don’t only hurt brands financially. It only takes a quarter of a second to lose a customer and not much longer for people to flood the call centers. Unable to handle the volume of customer complaints, companies experience decreased brand confidence as a result. “When marketers make checklists of how to make it through the holidays, they have to think about everything, including the safety of the site and the contribution that makes to the customer experience,” says Rosner, who referred to DDoS attacks as digital armed robbery. Though 95 percent of companies have some form of DDoS protection, it’s not necessarily the right kind. Firewalls, routers, and intrusion prevention systems aren’t designed for attacks, and can ultimately accelerate outages by bottlenecking traffic. “Every connection, whether legitimate or not, will utilize a link in their cable, using memory in the firewall,” says Frank Ip, vice president of marketing and business development at Black Lotus, a San Francisco DDoS-mitigation service. “That eventually overwhelms the stability, so firewall is not a solution.” Ip says that botnets, or compromised Internet connections, are especially prevalent in India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, countries with huge populations of young mobile users who predominantly use Androids, which are more easily corruptible than iOS. Mobile users are more susceptible to unwittingly committing cybercrime because of free Wi-Fi that lacks encryption, though Ip points out that large retailers are generally too savvy for their websites to be similarly unprotected. “It’s the same protocol,” Rosner agrees. “They’re designed to go across devices, whether it’s a laptop or an iPhone or an iPad or Android or what have you. The same security is embedded across all different types of channels.” For marketers to protect their websites, it can be as simple as having equipment to deal with an attack or working with a third-party mitigator who does. Rosner says that it’s important to have an early-warning system to detect anomalies, such as a sudden influx of traffic from another country. Ip adds, “If you compare the intangible losses – customer goodwill, brand equity – it will be a small amount of money to put some preventative resources in place.” Source: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2383707/what-can-ddos-attacks-mean-for-black-friday-and-cyber-monday

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What Can DDoS Attacks Mean for Black Friday and Cyber Monday?

Cleveland city website shutdown due to DDoS Attack

In retaliation for the police killing of a twelve-year-old boy in Cleveland and the fact that the names of the Police officers who shot him have not been released yet, the hacker group Anonymous claimed responsibility for shutting down the Cleveland city website early on Monday, reports VICE News. Anonymous is a loosely associated international network of activist and hacktivist entities. Anonymous is made up of individuals who hack into computer systems without permission and take data such as communications records, names, addresses, phone numbers, and credit cards. The group has become known for a series of well-publicized publicity stunts and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on government, religious, and corporate websites. The hacker group claimed responsibility for shutting down the Cleveland city website after the boy in Cleveland died due to injuries sustained in the police shooting. The boy was shot by police after he displayed a replica gun at a Cleveland recreation center. The Cleveland Police Department said in a statement that the child had not complied with orders to raise his hands. Instead, he apparently reached towards his waist band for the replica gun. The child had reportedly been pointing the toy weapon at members of the public outside the Cudell Recreation Center, prompting a 911 call, reports Reuters. The boy was taken to Metro Health Hospital for surgery on Saturday and remained in critical condition until his death early Sunday. The two officers involved in the incident were placed on administrative leave. One of them was treated at Fairview Hospital for an ankle injury, reports Reuters. According to a report on Cleveland.com that cited the deputy chief of police, Rice did not confront the officer verbally or physically. His father, Gregory Henderson, has questioned the use of lethal force saying, “Why not taze him? You shot him twice, not once, and at the end of the day you all don’t shoot for the legs, you shoot for the upper body,” as reported VICE News. The Department’s Use of Deadly Force Investigation Team is currently investigating the incident. Source: http://sputniknews.com/us/20141125/1015137543.html