Tag Archives: var-username

DDoS attack on 4Chan by Lizard Squad’s DDoS Rent-A-Tool Lizard Stresser

Lizard Squad’s rent-a-tool Lizard Stresser in action against 4Chan. The infamous band of hackers, Lizard Squad, which brought down the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live servers through Christmas with DDoS attack, are in the news again. This time the target is 4Chan.org, the popular image boarding website and tool used is the DDoS on rent, Lizard Stresser. 4Chan has been brought down by Lizard Stresser through a DDoS attack and still offline. Tweets from Lizard Squad indicate that the someone has rented the Lizard Squad’s rent-a-tool for DDoS to attack 4Chan website. Lizard Squad allegedly used a 1200 GB/s DDoS attack against PSN and XBL networks and is offering double the size of attacks on rent. At present details are sketchy and it is not known who has rented the Lizard Stresser to bring down the 4Chan website. Apparently Lizard Stresser was taken offline two days ago after somebody doxed the userids on the server. The website hosting Lizard Stresser now serves a different login page The Lizard Stresser offers individuals a way to take down IP addresses without having to know anything about hacking or DDoS attacks and is available in multiple subscription packages which range from $5.99 / €4.93 for a 100-second attack to $129.99 / €107 for an eight and a half hour long denial of service incident. The Lizard Squad also offers lifetime packs, prices for which can go upto $500 / €411. The lifetime packs are valid for five years as per Lizard Stresser website. 4Chan renters seem to have opted for the 8 hours pack from the looks of it but there is no official confirmation from either the Lizard Squad or 4Chan regarding the attack except for the tweet above(now deleted*). For the time being, the 4Chan website is inaccessible and will stay this way probably until the attack ends or 4Chan admin devise some method to manage to protect themselves against it. Considering that Lizard Squad brought down the networks of bigger and better Sony and Microsoft, 4Chan admin have a hard task cut out for them. There is also a outside chance that the 4Chan may be really down for maintenance , but that is difficult to imagine as Lizard Squad are known to be vocal about their exploits. There were reports of 4Chan admins announcing a while ago that there will be some downtime due to server maintenance, so it might come back online very soon. We will be updating the story as soon as we get any feedback/confirmation from either Lizard Squad or 4Chan. Lizard Squad has also deleted the above tweet about renting the Lizard Stresser just moments ago and the 4Chan website home is still showing some broken images. Source: http://www.techworm.net/2015/01/4chan-ddosed-lizard-squads-ddos-rent-tool-lizard-stresser.html

Read this article:
DDoS attack on 4Chan by Lizard Squad’s DDoS Rent-A-Tool Lizard Stresser

National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) investigate OP Pohjola DDoS attack

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) is investigating a Denial of Service (DoS) attack on the OP Pohjola financial services group. The attack shut down online banking and direct debit services, but the bank has no leads on who might have launched it. Police are investigating an attack on Finnish bank OP Pohjola’s online banking services that caused disruption for customers using online banking and card payments on New Year’s Eve. The company said in a press release that traffic in the denial of service attack originated both inside and outside Finland. The firm is investigating the incident in collaboration with the authorities, network operators and IT services provider, Tieto. A formal police complaint has been filed and OP says that the National Bureau of Investigation is looking into the case. The disruption started on Wednesday at around 16:30, according to the bank, and was only fixed after midnight. Disruption could continue, and those located outside Finland could face difficulties in using OP’s services. Source: http://yle.fi/uutiset/police_investigate_op_pohjola_attack/7716184

Lizard Squad Member Arrested in the UK

Police primarily interested in suspect PayPal activity but also searching for links to DDoS attacks. While the FBI has confirmed that it is investigating Lizard Squad following the group’s PlayStation Network and Xbox Live DDoS attacks over Christmas, the first arrest has been made by British police. The South East Regional Organized Crime Unit (SEROCU) in the UK announced the arrest of a member of cyberattack group Lizard Squad in a press release. The English law-enforcement agency has placed 22-year-old Vinnie Omari in custody, and according to documents obtained by journalist Brian Kerbs, Omari identified as a member of Lizard Squad. The warrent issued to Omari made clear that the police were primarily concerned about suspicious activity related to stolen PayPal accounts which occured well before the PSN and XBL attacks. “The South East Regional Organised Crime Unit has arrested a 22-year-old man from Twickenham on suspicion of fraud by false representation and Computer Misuse Act offences,” the press release reads. “The arrest yesterday is in connection with an ongoing investigation in to cyber fraud offences which took place between 2013 and August 2014 during which victims reported funds being stolen from their PayPal accounts.” In an email to The Daily Dot, Omari said police were looking for anything to connect him to the DDoS strikes, and confiscated his laptops, Xbox One, phone, and USB memory drives. Source: http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/25873/article/lizard-squad-member-arrested-in-the-uk/

More:
Lizard Squad Member Arrested in the UK

How Mega founder Kim Dotcom helped Xbox Live, PSN recover from Lizard Squad’s DDoS attack

How Kim Dotcom helped stop holiday Xbox Live and PSN DDoS attacks Over the Christmas holiday, a loosely organized group of hackers known as Lizard Squad took down Microsoft’s online gaming service, Xbox Live (XBL), as well as Sony’s online gaming platform, PlayStation Network (PSN), through coordinated denial-of-service attacks (DDoS). But the legally embattled owner of Mega, Kim Dotcom, may have offered the olive branch that helped both online gaming services slowly come back online. DDoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted network’s service or website to reset, or by consuming its resources at such a high level that it can no longer function. While relatively simple and not considered “hacking” by security experts, large-scale DDoS attacks, like those against Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, require the use of massive “botnets,” compromised computers all working in unison to overwhelm a service. This meant that for the majority of the holiday, including Christmas Day and Boxing Day, two of the highest traffic online gaming days of the year, most people were unable to access either Xbox Live or PSN. While Lizard Squad’s motivations for the attacks are still unclear, the group claims they want Microsoft and Sony to improve security on their online services. Just like many online attacks of this kind, it’s more likely they were perpetrated simply because they were possible, especially since preventing a DDoS attack is difficult regardless of how secure a network is. The controversy surrounding the attacks also involved a rival hacking group, The Finest Squad, allegedly attempting multiple times to take down Lizard Squad over the course of the holidays through their own DDoS attacks and by “doxing,” releasing the personal information of Lizard Squad members. These efforts ultimately failed and both PSN and XBL remained offline until Dotcom intervened. Lizard Squad and The Finest Squad also frequently traded insults through social media and on popular YouTube hacking-focused talk show, DramaAlert. This is where Kim Dotcom comes in: contacting Lizard Squad directly and promising the group 3,000 $99 Lifetime accounts, worth approximately $300,000 in total, for his encrypted upload service, Mega, if they stopped their DDoS assault on XBL and PSN. Lizard Squad also credited Dotcom with being the main peacemaker in terms of getting the attacks to stop. Despite one faction of Lizard Squad claiming all attacks have ceased, another faction of the group reportedly continued disrupting XBL and PSN, creating free digital game listings for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Destiny. When both services went back online they were also overwhelmed with thousands of users trying to log into their profiles simultaneously, creating additional difficulties for Microsoft and Sony’s online infrastructure. However, As of Dec. 30th, both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network are running relatively smoothly. Despite playing an important role in getting both gaming services back online, some have criticized Dotcom for setting a dangerous precedent by giving away free Mega accounts to malicious hackers. Other recent high-profile hacking incidents include a group of hackers known as the Guardians of Peace gaining access to Sony’s internal network and leaking a number unreleased films, and also threatening a terrorist attack if the controversial movie The Interview was released. Source: http://business.financialpost.com/2014/12/30/how-mega-founder-kim-dotcom-helped-stop-holiday-xbox-live-and-psn-ddos-attacks-by-appeasing-lizard-squad/?__lsa=7896-d0fe

View article:
How Mega founder Kim Dotcom helped Xbox Live, PSN recover from Lizard Squad’s DDoS attack

Crunchyroll Streaming Service Down Amid DDoS Attack

The Crunchyroll streaming service announced on Tuesday that it is currently down due to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack “of the same magnitude” as those recently targeted towards Sony and Microsoft consoles . Crunchyroll service went down at approximately 4:00 a.m. EST on Tuesday. DDoS attacks against Sony and Microsoft started on Christmas Day and made services on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles unavailable for approximately three days. A hacking group known as Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the attacks. Crunchyroll has over 400,000 reported paid subscribers. Source: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2014-12-30/crunchyroll-streaming-service-down-amid-ddos-attack/.82769

Read the original post:
Crunchyroll Streaming Service Down Amid DDoS Attack

DDoS attack on Swedish Parliament’s website

The official website of the Swedish Parliament was taken down on Tuesday, in what officials labelled “an outside attack”. The website, riksdagen.se, was taken down at 11am on Tuesday, with visitors met by a blank screen. By 2pm, the website was up and running again, but officials confirmed that the problem had not been caused by any internal IT troubles. “It went down because of an attack from the outside,” Riksdag spokesperson Anna Olderius told the TT news agency. “But we refuse to comment on security issues in any more detail than that.” The cyber attack marks the second against the website in the past two years. In October 2012, the website went down together with that of the country’s central bank other government websites, news networks, and university home pages. Hacktivist network Anonymous claimed responsibility for the October attacks. “You don’t fuck with the internet,” the group wrote online, in what was apparently a response to police raids on the previous hosts to The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks. The attacks were carried out via a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), where a website is bombarded with communication requests so that the servers become overloaded and the site crashes. As yet, no one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack. Source: http://www.thelocal.se/20141230/cyber-attack-hits-government-website

See more here:
DDoS attack on Swedish Parliament’s website

‘Bitcoin Baron’ claims credit for City of Columbia, KOMU DDoS attacks

He cited a 2010 SWAT raid in Columbia as his motivation behind the DDoS attacks. An individual is taking credit for the distributed denial of service attacks on the websites of the City of Columbia and KOMU-8 on Friday. KOMU posted about the attack on its Facebook page at 3:48 p.m. Friday, about three hours after the station had reported on a similar attack on the City of Columbia’s website earlier Friday. KOMU’s article included a statement from Assistant City Manager Tony St. Romaine indicating the activist group Anonymous was behind the attacks. Shortly after their site was attacked, KOMU received an email from a third party who indicated that he, not Anonymous, was behind both attacks. KOMU General Manager Marty Siddall said the individual referred to himself as “Bitcoin Baron.” Through his Twitter, Bitcoin Baron has connected himself to multiple other DDoS attacks. Bitcoin Baron said in a video that his motivation behind the attacks was a 2010 Columbia SWAT raid on the house of Jonathan Whitworth, who was presumed to be a marijuana dealer. During the raid, one of Whitworth’s dogs was fatally shot in front of his wife and child. “I decided that this should go viral once more to show everyone the true nature of how you and every police department does things,” Bitcoin Baron said in his video. Bitcoin Baron said in a tweet that no data was affected by any of the DDoS attacks. Prasad Calyam, assistant professor of computer science with a technical focus in cyber security, said DDoS attacks occur when a user creates a large amount of fake traffic that accesses a site’s servers all at once to crash the site. “(A DDoS attack) is a sort of brute force attack, where many machines are compromised to act like regular users in order to block real users from reaching the site,” he said. Calyam said DDoS attacks cannot be stopped as they occur, and he advised that locally blocking a website is the best way to deal with an attack. “(That is) because it’s hard for an Internet provider to block people from accessing your site,” he said. “The only way to prevent attacks is through an intrusion detection system, which can be really expensive … There are open source intrusion detection systems available, but they must be maintained and managed by experts.” Siddall said KOMU is working with their third-party Internet provider to prevent future attacks. Source: http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/12/29/bitcoin-baron-claims-credit-city-columbia-komu-ddo/

More here:
‘Bitcoin Baron’ claims credit for City of Columbia, KOMU DDoS attacks

Sony issues formal response to DDoS attacks in PSN update

For the first time in days, Sony has issued a formal response to the ongoing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) affecting various networks in the gaming industry, including PlayStation Network. While the update doesn’t offer much in terms of when PlayStation owners can expect full service to resume, Sony has at least assured us that they are working to restore full network access. Note: An update on Sony’s official support page notes that service is restored on PS3 and Vita; however, PSN is still down on PS4. A special section of the website is dedicated to PSN post-restoration that says if you are continuing to experience problems after PSN services are fully restored to refer to Contact Support. Here’s the full message from Catherine Jensen, VP of SCEA Consumer Experience. The video game industry has been experiencing high levels of traffic designed to disrupt connectivity and online gameplay. Multiple networks, including PSN, have been affected over the last 48 hours. PSN engineers are working hard to restore full network access and online gameplay as quickly as possible. From time to time there may be disruptions in service due to surges in traffic, but our engineers will be working to restore service as quickly as possible. If you received a PlayStation console over the holidays and have been unable to log onto the network, know that this problem is temporary and is not caused by your game console. We’ll continue to keep you posted on Twitter at @AskPlayStation and we’ll update this post once the problems subside. Thanks again for your patience. The DDoS attacks on PSN (and Xbox LIVE) began around Christmas Day. Though neither Sony nor Microsoft admitted to being DDoS’d, the notorious hacker group Lizard Squad was eager to claim credit. For those unfamiliar, this is the same group that launched multiple attacks earlier this year, including bomb threats to SOE president John Smedley. On Friday, one of the numerous Twitter accounts claiming to be Lizard Squad said the DDoS attacks were stopped and that any ongoing disruptions were “just the aftermath” of hours worth of traffic bombardment. However, another account claiming to be one of the prominent members of Lizard Squad, continued to tweet out messages suggesting the DDoS attacks were continuing. Even now, two days after Christmas, PSN is still struggling to return to full service; although, some believe it to be Sony simply restructuring its system architecture. At this point it’s still not 100 percent certain if the outages are ongoing DDoS attacks, but it appears for now at least that Sony has a grasp on the problem and is working to restore service. Hopefully they are addressing the issues and even working to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. Considering this isn’t the first time PSN has been brought down for a lenghty period, I’m hoping Sony will finally take some serious action in preventing this sort of outage again. But, I’m also skeptical; if they haven’t learned by now, when will they? Source: http://www.gamezone.com/news/sony-issues-formal-response-to-ddos-attacks-in-psn-update-9048-jrni

View original post here:
Sony issues formal response to DDoS attacks in PSN update

Update: Columbia’s website back online after cyber attack; KOMU down from DDoS attack

UPDATE: This story has been updated to include details of another denial of service attack on KOMU and additional comments on FBI involvement in investigating the attack on Columbia’s website. COLUMBIA — The city’s official website is back online after being down since Wednesday night, when a cyber attack flooded the server with information requests. But the hacker responsible might have found a new target in KOMU. The city’s site, gocolumbiamo.com, was back up as of 12:35 p.m. The site provides information and updates to the public about city services and events. Deputy city manager Tony St. Romaine said city officials have been in touch with the FBI about the incident. Joel Sealer, a spokesman for the FBI in Kansas City, said only that city officials had been in contact with the agency, but he would not comment on or confirm the existence of an investigation. St. Romaine said the activist hacker group Anonymous was the source of the attack on the city’s site, but a YouTube video posted by Bitcoin Baron denies that affiliation and claims sole responsibility for the attack. In the video’s introduction, Bitcoin Baron states that the attack is in retaliation for a February 2010 incident where Columbia police killed one dog and wounded another during a drug raid. The YouTube video then shows footage from the raid. The city’s website was hit by a distributed denial of services attack, which sent requests from multiple sources to the site’s server to overload its bandwidth capacity. City staff became aware of the problem at around 11 p.m. Wednesday and shut down access to the site to sort out the problem. KOMU.com’s outage began around 3 p.m. Friday, and KOMU posted on its Facebook page at 4 p.m. Saturday to address the distributed denial of service attack. In the post, KOMU calls the attack a “direct result” of its reporting on the city’s website being taken down. Its story noted that city officials believed Anonymous was responsible, but a third party contacted the news station to claim responsibility and threaten to take down KOMU.com as well. Attacks of this nature generally don’t result in the theft of information or other security loss, St. Romaine said. “Your system is not getting hacked into, and data is not getting compromised,” he said. Source: http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/183192/update-columbias-website-back-online-after-cyber-attack-komu-down/

Continue Reading:
Update: Columbia’s website back online after cyber attack; KOMU down from DDoS attack

DDoS attack takes down City of Columbia website

Columbia Deputy City Manager says a hacker group took responsibility for the attack on GoColumbiaMo.com A City of Columbia official said the city’s website, gocolumbiamo.com, suffered a cyber attack Wednesday night, and the website will be down until further notice. Deputy City Manager Tony St. Romaine said Anonymous, a group associated with cyber attacks and hacking activism, took down the city’s website with a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. St. Romaine said the group cited a drug-related SWAT raid in Columbia in 2010, where police shot two dogs in the house. A YouTube video shows a user taking credit for the attack, along with the SWAT raid from 2010. (Warning: the video contains strong language and graphic content.) A news release sent Friday morning said the city’s IT department was notified of an attack around 11 p.m. Wednesday. Deputy City Manager Tony St. Romaine told ABC 17 News IT staff worked through the night until 7 a.m. Thursday. The staff left the office, but continued to work from home. “This form of attack is an attempt to make an online service unavailable by flooding the website server with requests from multiple sources,” the release said. “In most cases, they involve forging of sender addresses so that the location of the attacking machines cannot easily be identified.” The release said this sort of attack renders city services provided online unavailable, and doesn’t compromise personal information. Source: http://www.abc17news.com/news/city-of-columbia-website-suffers-cyber-attack/30405572

View article:
DDoS attack takes down City of Columbia website