Tag Archives: featured news

US 911 emergency system can be crippled by a mobile botnet

What would it take for attackers to significantly disrupt the 911 emergency system across the US? According to researchers from Ben-Gurion Univerisity of the Negev’s Cyber-Security Research Center, as little as 200,000 compromised mobile phones located throughout the country. The phones, made to repeatedly place calls to the 911 service, would effect a denial-of-service attack that would made one third (33%) of legitimate callers give up on reaching it. And if the number of those … More ?

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US 911 emergency system can be crippled by a mobile botnet

DNSSEC: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water

A recent report raiseed concerns about the abuse of DNSSEC to conduct DDoS attacks. The article reported that DNSSEC-signed domains can be used to conduct reflected DDoS attacks with large amplification factors (averaging 28.9x in their study) that could potentially cripple victim servers. The report went on to recommend that organizations deploying DNSSEC should configure their DNS servers to prevent this and other types of abuse. While this report presents some useful information about the … More ?

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DNSSEC: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water

Twitter-controlled Android backdoor delivers banking malware

A backdoor Trojan named Twitoor is the first instance of Android malware that receives its commands from a Twitter account. Keeping their botnet out of law enforcement’s and other criminals’ hands is imperative for botmasters if they want to keep earning. C&C servers are the norm, but they can be tracked down, seized by the authorities and, ultimately, reveal crucial information about the botnet, allowing them to shut it down or cripple it. Twitter or … More ?

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Twitter-controlled Android backdoor delivers banking malware

DDoS attacks increase 83%, Russia top victim

DDoS attacks increased 83 percent to more than 182,900 attacks in the second quarter of the year, according to Nexusguard. The newest report shows that Russia has become the No. 1 victim country. Starlink – a Russian ISP supporting small, medium and large enterprises – received more than 40 percent of the DDoS attacks measured over a two-day period. This targeted DNS attack also pushed the mean average DDoS duration to hours instead of minutes, … More ?

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DDoS attacks increase 83%, Russia top victim

Slew of WP-based business sites compromised to lead to ransomware

If an approach works well, there is no reason to change tack, and the masters of the SoakSoak botnet are obviously of the same belief. A year and a half after they have been spotted compromising WP-based websites through vulnerabilities in the Slider Revolution (“RevSlider”) plugin and redirecting visitors to the malware-laden SoakSoak.ru website, they are at it again. “Websites are often compromised by botnets that scan websites for vulnerable software or application plugins,” Invincea’s … More ?

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Slew of WP-based business sites compromised to lead to ransomware

DDoS attacks continue to escalate in both size and frequency

Arbor Networks released global DDoS attack data for the first six months of 2016 that shows a continuing escalation in the both the size and frequency of attacks. Arbor’s data is gathered through ATLAS, a collaborative partnership with more than 330 service provider customers who share anonymous traffic data with Arbor in order to deliver an aggregated view of global traffic and threats. ATLAS data has also been utilized recently in Cisco’s Visual Networking Index … More ?

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DDoS attacks continue to escalate in both size and frequency

Ransomware: Can we finally start learning from past mistakes?

There is a phrase I am finding quite relevant lately. It is attributed to the philosopher George Santayana and it goes like this: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The reason it comes to my mind a lot these days is the headlines we are seeing relating to the latest ransomware attacks against companies’, hospitals’ and government departments’ systems. Previous headlines highlighted how criminals used DDoS attacks to extort money … More ?

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Ransomware: Can we finally start learning from past mistakes?

The Network Ops DDoS Playbook

With the prevalence of DDoS attacks, good preparation and planning can go a long way toward making the DDoS response process as manageable, painless, and inexpensive as possible. The Network Ops DDoS Playbook is a guide focused on how to prepare yourself against a DDoS attack on your business and what to do if you are under attack. You’ll find practical tips, best practices and an overview of the cyber security technologies available to protect … More ?

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The Network Ops DDoS Playbook

25,000-strong CCTV botnet used for crippling DDoS attacks

A DDoS attack against a jewelry shop website has lead researchers to the discovery of a CCTV botnet comprised of some 25,000 cameras from around the globe. The website had been repeatedly attacked, first with 35,000 HTTP requests per second and then, when those efforts were thwarted, with 50,000 HTTP requests per second. Looking into the IP addresses from which the attack was coming from, Sucuri researchers discovered that all of them were running the … More ?

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25,000-strong CCTV botnet used for crippling DDoS attacks

DNS provider NS1 hit with multi-faceted DDoS attacks

Early last week, DNS and traffic management provider NS1 was hit with a series of DDoS attacks that lasted several days, and managed to impact DNS delivery in the European, American and Asian region. “Over the course of last week, we sustained dozens of large DDoS attacks, ranging in strategy from simple volumetric attacks, to complex direct DNS lookup attacks, to concentrated attacks against our upstream network providers and other vendors. These attacks are an … More ?

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DNS provider NS1 hit with multi-faceted DDoS attacks