last Friday, an attack DDoS he left without internet for a large part of the united States, Europe and some Asian countries. The servers of a company called Dyn were the object of the hackers, who disrupted the functioning of important internet sites such as Spotify, Twitter, Reddit, Pay Pal, Netflix, CNN, The New York Times, Amazon, and Etsy, among others.
WE RECOMMEND: Twitter, Spotify, and other sites suffered cyber attack
it Took a few hours to know how they managed to bring down the internet in a matter of minutes, and as, according to experts, this attack is a sign of what is to come. We tell you everything you need to know for the next time you stay without internet, don’t blame your internet provider but also to hackers.
What it is and how it works a DDoS attack?
Dyn, one of the largest suppliers of servers in the united States began to have problems around 7 in the morning, when the City of Mexico. Millions of requests for access to any of the sites that hosts pervading the traffic, making the download very slow or null, because the server is unable to find the DNS server that is being requested.
The servers, such as those offered by Dyn, serve as a telephone directory but for websites. Your job is to convert domains into IP addresses so that when someone browse a page, to be redirected to such.
The effectiveness of this attack was due to that his goal was a DNS server, which makes it much easier to attack multiple sites at the same time and convert internet traffic into a chaos. According to the website Wired, another of the reasons for the attack on Friday was effective was because in addition to having malicious traffic to the sites, the servers must control the automatic responses to re-load the site and even why, as they surely do, the common user presses the F5 key to refresh the page waiting for you to reload.
How did you oversaturate the internet traffic?
Very easy, through the cameras, speakers, televisions, or refrigerators that connect to the internet. These often have security systems very weak that hackers exploit to break in and take control of the device.
according To Brian Krebs, a journalist who specializes in cyber security and for which the site has been the subject of DDoS attacks, said the site the Verge that the attackers formed a network of bots Mirai, who will take advantage of security flaws in the "internet of things". The malware Mirai scans the network in search of internet-connected devices that still have the factory settings or a user and fixed password. To take control, makes the millions of devices send a request to the server which, to be replicated at the same time, it saturates.
how common Are DDoS attacks?
Yes, mainly because they take advantage of the "internet of things" and use the devices connected to the internet, however the attack Friday could be one of the largest.
On his Twitter account, New World Hacker, one of the groups that claimed the attack, published a picture in which they claim that the attack used a bandwidth of thousand 256 gigabytes, a traffic higher than that recorded which ranked as the most powerful attack. In September of this year, the French company, hosting OVH was the subject of several attacks at once that made that record 799 gigabytes per second.
WE RECOMMEND: EU accuses Russia of cyber attacks to interfere in elections
Who is behind this?
As mentioned before, New World Hacker was one of the groups that claimed the attack, arguing that it was only a test.
For his part, Wikileaks published a tweet in which he asked his followers to finish the attack "because you already had proven your point". This, after the Saturday, access to the internet from the embassy of Ecuador, it was restricted to Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks.
according To a press release of the embassy of Ecuador in England, the decision was made because the country does not intervene in the elections of other countries and julian Assange from his political asylum, what he was doing.
Some specialists even, have come to assume that China or Russia are behind this attack because of the magnitude.
For the 5 of the afternoon, Dyn was able to control the problem, and Kyle Owen, chief strategy officer of the company, said that its servers had been saturated with tens of millions of IP addresses that sent requests to be malicious and that the company regarded him as "an attack very sophisticated and complex," which could not be done with a home computer.
The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the attack that left without internet in the united States.
according To the british newspaper the Guardian, Bruce Scheier, security expert and author of the article "Someone is learning how to take down the internet" (someone is learning how to throw the internet), companies that are dedicated to the internet’s infrastructure have been the subject of DDos attacks in order to find faults in the systems. Something that you apparently already found.
What can you do to prevent these attacks?
As such, there is no easy solution, as companies have been dealing with this for years and even then, DDoS attacks have increased in recent months.
Some sites, like adult videos Pornhub, they found a short-term solution to stay simultaneously on different servers, so that if one fails, the other will be able to withstand the traffic.
it Is very likely that the manufacturers of devices that work with the internet of things, with new and improved security measures to avoid giving an easy entry to hackers.
mrf
No comments:
Post a Comment