Tag Archives: function-maybe

Major US DNS provider hit with DDoS, part of the Internet becomes unreachable

US-based DNS provider Dyn has suffered a massive DDoS attack earlier today, and it resulted in many websites being completely or intermittently inaccessible for a few hours. According to status reports published by the company, the target of the attack was the company’s Managed DNS infrastructure, and impacted Managed DNS customers located on the East Coast of the US. Among the websites that experienced issues as a result of the attack are Reddit, GitHub, Spotify, … More ?

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Major US DNS provider hit with DDoS, part of the Internet becomes unreachable

53% of DDoS attacks result in additional compromise

DDoS attack volume has remained consistently high and these attacks cause real damage to organizations, according to Neustar. The global response also affirms the prevalent use of DDoS attacks to distract as “smokescreens” in concert with other malicious activities that result in additional compromise, such as viruses and ransomware. “Distributed denial-of-service attacks are no longer isolated events limited to large, highly visible, targets. Sophisticated attacks hit companies of all sizes, in all industries,” said Rob … More ?

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53% of DDoS attacks result in additional compromise

IoT-based DDoS attacks on the rise

Cybercriminal networks are increasingly taking advantage of lax Internet of Things device security to spread malware and create zombie networks, or botnets, unbeknownst to their device owners. When lax security becomes a huge problem Symantec’s Security Response team has discovered that cybercriminals are hijacking home networks and everyday consumer connected devices to help carry out DDoS attacks on more profitable targets, usually large companies. To succeed, they need cheap bandwidth and get it by stitching … More ?

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IoT-based DDoS attacks on the rise

Spam is once again on the rise

Spam volume is back to mid-2010 heights, and Cisco Talos researchers say that the Necurs botnet is partly to blame. “Many of the host IPs sending Necurs’ spam have been infected for more than two years. To help keep the full scope of the botnet hidden, Necurs will only send spam from a subset of its minions. An infected host might be used for two to three days, and then sometimes not again for two … More ?

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Spam is once again on the rise

Cyber terrorism seen as biggest single future threat

47% of UK IT decision makers (ITDMs) are more worried about cyber terrorism attacks now than they were 12 months ago, according to IP EXPO Europe. This was identified as the biggest cyber security risk in the future (27%), followed by attacks to national infrastructure (13%). In light of this newly perceived risk, more traditional cyber threats such as ransomware and DDoS are rated as a lower risk, with only 11%, 10% and 9% of … More ?

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Cyber terrorism seen as biggest single future threat

Business still ill-prepared to handle modern DDoS attacks

In September 1996, New York City’s original ISP, Panix, was hit by a SYN flood denial of service attack that took them offline for several days. At a time when only 20 million Americans were online, this was one of the first high profile examples of the growing importance of network and service availability. It also demonstrated how fragile internet infrastructure was at the time. According to an advisory from Carnegie Melon’s CERT, “There is, … More ?

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Business still ill-prepared to handle modern DDoS attacks

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

Security testing platform for app-aware infrastructures

At Black Hat USA 2016, Spirent Communications will be presenting CyberFlood, a security and performance testing platform suitable for complex testing scenarios. With CyberFlood, users can ensure that their security and performance testing addresses their unique environments by emulating realistic traffic volume, threats, and attack scenarios including fuzzing, malware, and DDoS attacks. Designed with team testing in mind, CyberFlood’s intuitive web UI extends easy-to-use best practices for faster, repeatable, and more accurate testing. Users can … More ?