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2017 may be crisis year for DDoS attacks, warns Deloitte

The proliferation of IoT devices and IoT exploit kits may make 2017 a turning point in DDoS attacks requiring new defence tactics, warns Deloitte Organisations have generally been able to keep pace with the increasing size, frequency and impact of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, but that may change in 2017, Deloitte has warned. DDoS is not a new topic, but the potential scale of the problem in 2017 is, according to the latest Technology, media and telecommunications predictions report from Deloitte. The size of DDoS attacks increased by an average of 30% a year from 2013 to 2015, but 2016 saw the first two attacks of one terabit per second (Tbps) or more, and Deloitte predicts that trend will continue in 2017. According to the report, 2017 will see an average of one attack a month reaching at least 1Tbps in size, with the number of DDoS attacks for the year expected to reach 10 million. Deloitte predicts an average attack size of 1.25Gbps to 1.5Gbps, and the report points out that an unmitigated attack in this size range would be sufficient to take many organisations offline. The anticipated escalation is due to three concurrent trends, the report said. First, the growing installed base of insecure internet of things (IoT) devices that are usually easier to incorporate into botnets than PCs, smartphones and tablets. Second, the online availability of malware methodologies such as Mirai, which allow relatively unskilled attackers to corral insecure IoT devices and use them to launch attacks. Third, the availability of ever-higher bandwidth speeds, which means that each compromised device can send a lot more junk data. The report warns that the consequence of the growth of IoT devices alone could mean that content distribution networks (CDNs) and local mitigations may not be able to scale readily to mitigate the impact of concurrent large-scale attacks, requiring a new approach to tackling DDoS attacks. Phill Everson, head of cyber risk services, Deloitte UK, said a DDoS attack aims to make a website or connected device inaccessible. “DDoS attacks are the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of fake customers converging on a traditional shop at the same time. The shop struggles to identify genuine customers and quickly becomes overwhelmed. The consequence could see an online commerce site temporarily unable to transact, or a government site not able to process tax returns,” he said. Everson said the expected volume and scale of DDoS attacks in 2017 would challenge the defences of most organisations, regardless of size. “Businesses of all sizes should acknowledge the growing DDoS threat and consider how best to handle attacks of these magnitudes,” he said. Any organisation that is increasing its dependence on the internet should be aware of a potential spike in the impact of such attacks, according to the report. The entities that should remain alert include, but are not limited to, retailers with a high share of online revenues, online video game companies, video streaming services, online business and service delivery companies such as financial services firms, and government online services, the report said. “Some organisations may have become a little blasé about DDoS attacks, however these attacks are likely to increase in intensity in 2017 and beyond, and the attackers are likely to become more inventive. Unfortunately, it may never be possible to relax about DDoS attacks,” authors of the report said. Deloitte recommends that companies and governments should consider a range of options to mitigate the impact of DDoS attacks, such as decentralising critical functions like cloud computing, leasing a larger bandwidth capacity than they need, proactively identifying weaknesses and vulnerabilities related to DDoS attacks, developing agile defence techniques, and introducing granular traffic filtering capabilities. Source: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/450411183/2017-may-be-crisis-year-for-DDoS-attacks-warns-Deloitte

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2017 may be crisis year for DDoS attacks, warns Deloitte

European Commission Hit By DDoS Attack

A cyber-attack took the European Commission’s services offline on Thursday, although it is thought hackers didn’t gain access to any systems and no data was compromised. According to  Politico , internet services at the EC were down for several hours on Thursday afternoon following a DDoS attack. An email sent to EC staff said that a DDoS attack “resulted in the saturation of our internet connection.” Although DDoS attacks are often used as a decoy by cyber-criminals to deflect attention away from a different type of attack, there is no evidence that’s the case here. “No data breach has occurred,” the EC said in a statement sent to  Politico . “The attack has so far been successfully stopped with no interruption of service, although connection speeds have been affected for a time.” Despite the EC’s claim that there was no interruption to its services, one staff member told  Politico  that the internet connection went down for several hours on two separate occasions, stopping employees from getting work done. There is no indication at the moment who carried out the attack or what the motivation was. The EC is, however, bracing itself for further trouble as DDoS attacks often come in waves. The EC and the European Union (EU) are dealing with a number of cyber-related issues at the moment. Top of the agenda is the potential impact of  Brexit on cybersecurity  across the region, as well as incoming data protection laws. The European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force in May 2018, but there is  plenty of work  ahead for businesses and governments before that deadline. Source: http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/european-commission-hit-by-ddos/

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European Commission Hit By DDoS Attack

BlackNurse Attack Lets Lone Computers Take Down Whole Networks

DDoS attacks generally rely on big numbers to get results. Hundreds of thousands of devices, millions of IP addresses all unleashing coordinated blasts of data at another device to bring it to its knees. A BlackNurse denial-of-service attack doesn’t need a massive army of zombies to be effective. The BlackNurse attack is much more efficient than the DDoS attacks that crippled security researcher Brian Krebs’ website and the DNS servers at Dyn. Some recent DDoS attacks have seen traffic peak at more than 1 Tbps. A BlackNurse attack has the ability to disrupt by sending just a fraction of that volume. As little as 21 Mbps can be enough to take down a firewall, according to security firm Netresec. What’s different about BlackNurse that allows it to inflict so much damage with so little effort? It’s the type of traffic it utilizes. BlackNurse directs Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets, which have been used in other DDoS attacks in the past. BlackNurse uses a specific type — ICMP type 3 code 3. An attack from a single laptop could, theoretically, knock an entire business offline, though it’s not likely to be a very  large  business. In their blog post, Netresec calls out firewalls made by Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Sonicwall, and Zyxel as being at risk. Most of the devices Netresec reports as being vulnerable to a BlackNurse attack (like the Cisco ASA 5506 and Zyxel Zywall USG50) were designed for small office or home office use. That said, TDC, a Denmark-based company that offers DDoS protection services to businesses, has seen enterprise-grade gear impacted. “We had expected that professional firewall equipment would be able to handle the attack,” they wrote, adding that they’ve seen around 100 of these attacks launched against their customers. TDC also notes that BlackNurse has the potential to create a lot of havoc. In Denmark’s IP space alone they discovered 1.7 million devices that respond to the ICMP requests that the BlackNurse attack leverages. If even a small percentage of those 1.7 million devices are vulnerable, the effects of a coordinated, large-scale attack could be disastrous. And that’s just Denmark. Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/leemathews/2016/11/14/blacknurse-attack-lets-lone-computers-take-down-whole-networks/#6d27bd961999

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BlackNurse Attack Lets Lone Computers Take Down Whole Networks