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Qakbot botnet disrupted, malware removed from 700,000+ victim computers

The Qakbot botnet has been crippled by the US Department of Justice (DOJ): 52 of its servers have been seized and the popular malware loader has been removed from over 700,000 victim computers around the world. “To disrupt the botnet, the FBI was able to redirect Qakbot botnet traffic to and through servers controlled by the FBI, which in turn instructed infected computers in the United States and elsewhere to download a file created by … More ? The post Qakbot botnet disrupted, malware removed from 700,000+ victim computers appeared first on Help Net Security .

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Qakbot botnet disrupted, malware removed from 700,000+ victim computers

Blame the US, not China, for the recent surge in massive cyberattacks

The internet’s new scourge is hugely damaging global attacks that harness armies of routers, cameras, and other connected gadgets—the so-called Internet of Things (IoT)—to direct floods of traffic that can take down swaths of the network. The blame so far has largely fallen on the Chinese manufacturers who churn out devices with shoddy security on the cheap. But all those devices have to be plugged in somewhere for them to used maliciously. And American consumers are increasingly the ones plugging them in. Nearly a quarter of the internet addresses behind these distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks are located in the United States, newresearch from network services firm Akamai has found. Some 180,000 US IP addresses took part in DDoS attacks in the last quarter of 2016, it found—more than four times as many as addresses originating in China. Akamai’s findings are particularly notable because the armies of hacked devices that carry out DDoS attacks—such as those controlled by the Mirai malware—don’t bother covering their tracks. That means the IP addresses are far more likely to genuinely correspond to a location within a certain country, the report’s authors write. The findings also end an era of Chinese dominance in DDoS attacks. Over the previous year, China has accounted for the highest proportion of IP addresses taking part in such attacks globally. Now the US is the clear leader, accounting for 24% of such addresses. The UK and Germany are a distant second and third. (To be clear, though, wherever the attacking devices’ IP addresses are, the person controlling them could be located anywhere.) The huge number of devices taking part in DDoS attacks in the US means regulation there, and in Europe, could stem the flood of damaging traffic. Of course, IoT regulation is a thorny issue—essentially, no US federal agency really wants to take the problem on—and there remain technical questions over how to actually go about blocking the attacks. Still, it’s a lot clearer now that simply pointing the finger at China isn’t enough. Source: https://qz.com/912419/akamai-akam-report-a-quarter-of-ddos-ip-addresses-are-now-from-the-us/

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Blame the US, not China, for the recent surge in massive cyberattacks

Majority of DDoS Attacks in October-December 2016 Conducted From Germany, UK, US

According to reports, United States, the United Kingdom and Germany became the top three source countries for DDoS attacks in October-December 2016. MOSCOW (Sputnik) – The United States, the United Kingdom and Germany became the top three source countries for DDoS attacks in October-December 2016, an Internet company dubbed Akamai said in report Wednesday, adding that the overall number of attacks in 2016 increased by 4 percent compared to previous year. “The top three source countries for DDoS attacks were the U.S. (24%), the U.K. (10%), and Germany (7%). In the past year, China dominated the top 10 list of source countries. In Q4 2016, China dropped to the fourth position overall, with 6% of traffic,” the State of the Internet / Security Report said. Russia became the fifth country in the list, with 4.4 percent of attacks. “The average number of DDoS attacks remained steady this quarter [October-December 2016] at 30 per target, indicating that after the first attack, an organization has a high likelihood of experiencing another,” the report said. The study notes that the number of IP addresses, used for DDoS attacks, significantly increased in the last quarter of 2016. The report also provides data regarding attacks in January- September 2016, with China, the United States, Turkey and the United Kingdom being the top source countries for attacks. Source: https://sputniknews.com/world/201702151050711562-ddos-atacks-internet/

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Majority of DDoS Attacks in October-December 2016 Conducted From Germany, UK, US

Newsweek Website Suffers DDoS Attack After Publishing Controversial Trump Report

Newsweek reported suffering a massive DDoS attack right after they published an exposé on how some of Donald Trump’s companies had violated the United States embargo on trading with Cuba. The attack was sufficient to prevent access to the article on Friday, September 30, but the attack subsided, and the report was available the following day. Kurt Eichenwald, the journalist that penned the piece, and Jim Impoco, Newsweek Editor-in-Chief, both categorized the incident as a cyber-attack. “The reason ppl couldnt read #TrumpInCuba piece late yesterday is that hackers launched a major attack on Newsweek after it was posted,” Eichenwald wrote on Twitter. “Last night we were on the receiving end of what our IT chief called a ‘massive’ DoS (denial of service) attack,” Impoco told fellow media outlet TalkingPointMemo (TPM) via email. Some websites that generate enough hype can suffer from huge traffic loads that overcome servers. Nevertheless, Newsweek is a reputable news portal that has the resources to deal with such traffic spikes. Impoco was very adamant that the incident was because of a coordinated DDoS attack, which he claims might have originated from Russia, but did not elaborate beyond explaining that the DDoS attack’s “main” IP address was from Russia. This explanation doesn’t make any technical sense since DDoS attacks don’t have “main” IP addresses. Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/newsweek-website-suffers-ddos-attack-after-publishing-controversial-trump-report-508874.shtml

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Newsweek Website Suffers DDoS Attack After Publishing Controversial Trump Report

Pokémon Go Servers Suffer Downtime, Possibly Due to DDoS Attacks

With server issues, Pokémon Go players may have had trouble catching much this weekend and it wasn’t merely due to the tremendously popular game crashing a lot on account of a massive new roll-out. A hacker group has claimed responsibility for the server outage, with DDoS attacks. A hacking group known as PoodleCorp has claimed responsibility for Pokémon Go servers crashing on Saturday, an attack which coincided with a roll-out of the tremendously popular game in 26 new countries. While its claim is yet to be verified, the hacking group has notable targeted several YouTube profiles, including the most followed YouTuber of them all, Pewdiepie. The claim was made via a social media post [1] on PoodleCorp’s Twitter account: PokemonGo #Offline #PoodleCorp The group also re-tweeted another post from the supposed leader of the group, who implied that another bigger attack was also coming. The poster wrote [2] : Just was a lil test, we do something on a larger scale soon . Several users took to social media to complain about the outage during a time when the gaming phenomenon is catching on like wildfire around the world, sending Nintendo share prices skyrocket by 86% in a week’s time. I’m really pissed off that Pokémon Go is down because a group of killjoys decided it would be fun to hack the servers and take them offline. — Meg Bethany Read (@triforcemeg) July 16, 2016 Pokemon GO got DDoS ‘d and DDOS became a trending topic lmao Earlier this week, a security researcher discovered a potentially major security flaw [4] win the application. The augmented reality game has captured the imagination of people around the world, wherein players capture virtual Pokemons before collecting and using them to battle other Pokemons captured by other players. Released on July 7, ten days ago, the application has already been downloaded over 10 million times on Apple and Android devices. A new roll-out saw the game now available in 34 countries, including Australia, the United States and almost all of Europe. Source: http://need-bitcoin.com/pokemon-go-servers-suffer-downtime-possibly-due-to-ddos-attacks/

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Pokémon Go Servers Suffer Downtime, Possibly Due to DDoS Attacks

Mike McNeill’s Diary for Monday, July 11, 2016: Fighting off the DDoS

magnoliareporter.com experienced some technical issues on Friday. Our website is hosted by a service known as TownNews.com , which hosts and provides technical assistance to thousands of media-oriented websites across the country. TownNews.com was hit by a directed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Friday afternoon. This mainly manifested itself by making it difficult for us — and hundreds of other websites — to access our servers and make changes. People may have had difficulty accessing our website during that time. We do not think that our thousands of daily visitors have anything to worry about as TownNews.com technology responded immediately. That said, it is probably a good thing that we are not president of the United States. To us, hackers present a clear and present danger to the security of the United States, which has our permission to deal with them with extreme prejudice. North Korea is bent out of shape over the pending deployment by South Korea of the U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Defense System, or THAAD. THAAD launchers and fire control systems are made in East Camden. North Korea’s military said in a statement that, “There will be physical response measures from us as soon as the location and time that the invasionary tool for U.S. world supremacy, THAAD, will be brought into South Korea are confirmed. It is the unwavering will of our army to deal a ruthless retaliatory strike and turn (the South) into a sea of fire and a pile of ashes the moment we have an order to carry it out.” Ohhhhhhh. We’re scared. Seriously, how many submarines, cruisers, aircraft carriers, bombers and drones are circling offshore North Korea, ready to unleash hell at any given moment? And that’s just the U.S. military. That sea of fire and pile of ashes looks a lot like future downtown Pyougyang to us. The Magnolia School District website is having a makeover. We’ll let you know when the site is up and running. Looking for more widely spread drought conditions when the new report comes out later this week. We’re expecting more abnormally dry conditions in South Arkansas. Patrick Posey died Saturday at his home near Benton, LA. Posey and his wife, Susan, performed much of the mural restoration work around the square a few years ago. Some fool vandalized highway signs in the Walkerville area on during the weekend, but the hate speech written on them was cleaned up. Our new online poll asks for your opinion about the state of race relations in Columbia County – whether they are better, worse or about the same as a decade ago. Another question might be what each of us, as individuals, is doing to make things better. Five years ago, we reported that Walkerville Cumberland Presbyterian Church was dedicating a new manse. A year ago, we reported that Betsy Production was drilling an oil well on the SAU campus. Vice President Aaron Burr shot and mortally wounded former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel on this date in 1804. Author E.B. White was born on this date in 1899. George Gershwin died on this date in 1937. Source: http://www.magnoliareporter.com/news_and_business/mike_mcneills_diary/article_733b45f8-4720-11e6-9e2d-97f7f136ad46.html

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Mike McNeill’s Diary for Monday, July 11, 2016: Fighting off the DDoS

Nearly half of all DDoS attacks uses multiple attack vectors

Akamai released a new security report that provides analysis and insight into the global attack threat landscape including DDoS attacks. Akamai observed a 52 percent increase in average peak band…

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Nearly half of all DDoS attacks uses multiple attack vectors