Largest DDoS attack ever delivered by botnet of hijacked IoT devices. Securing the internet of things should become a major priority now that an army of compromised devices – perhaps 1 million strong - has swamped one of the industry’s top distributed denial-of-service protection services.
Customize Windows 10 to your liking, not theirs. Read Now A giant botnet made up of hijacked internet-connected things like cameras, lightbulbs, and thermostats has launched the largest DDoS attack ever against a top security blogger, an attack so big Akamai had to cancel his account because defending it ate up too many resources. It wasn’t that Akamai couldn’t mitigate the attack – it did so for three days – but doing so became too costly, so the company made a business decision to cut the affected customer loose, says Andy Ellis the company’s chief security officer. + MORE: Homeland Security issues call to action on Internet of Things security + IoT exploited The number of machines in the latest botnet is still unknown, and could be as large as a million.
Twitter. IoT devices being increasingly used for DDoS attacks. Department of Homeland Security Investigating Massive Internet Attack. Internet outage takes down Twitter, Netflix, PayPal and many of the web's most visited websites. A major Internet outage affected many of the world's biggest online firms on Friday, with websites including Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, Reddit, PayPal and eBay down for long stretches.
Other services such as PlayStation Network also appeared to be hit by the outage. Google and Facebook were unaffected. The widespread disruption was the result of a coordinated assault on some of the underlying infrastructure that powers the Internet. Dyn, one of several companies responsible for hosting the crucial web directory known as the Domain Name System (DNS), suffered a sustained so-called “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack, leading many people intermittently to lose access to specific sites or to the Internet entirely. Gadgets and tech news in pictures A DDoS attack means hackers hijack vast numbers of internet-connected devices to swamp a victim’s website with so much junk traffic that it is unable to cope.
It still isn’t clear where the cyber-attack originated. Reuse content. Chinese firm says it did all it could ahead of cyberattack. FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2016 file photo, a worker is silhouetted against a computer display showing a live visualization of the online phishing and fraudulent phone calls across China during the 4th China Internet Security Conference (ISC) in Beijing.
Chinese electronics maker Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology has issued a recall on Monday, Oct. 24, 2016, for millions of products sold in the U.S. following a devastating cyberattack, but has lashed out at critics who say its devices were at fault. (Ng Han Guan, File/Associated Press) By Gerry Shih | APOctober 25 at 9:06 AM BEIJING — A Chinese electronics maker that has recalled millions of products sold in the U.S. said Tuesday it did all it could to prevent a massive cyberattack that briefly blocked access to websites including Twitter and Netflix.
Hangzhou Xiongmai Technology has said millions of web-connected cameras and digital recorders became compromised because customers failed to change their default passwords. Itpro.co. Mirai, the botnet malware that was made open source at the beginning of this month, was allegedly behind the DDoS attack that took out Twitter, Github and Spotify, among others, on Friday.
The attack, which initially affected the east coast of the US before becoming global later in the evening, used the same IoT-powered malware that knocked security specialist Brian Krebs's website Krebs On Security offline in September, it has been claimed. In an analysis of the attack, researchers at security vendor Flashpoint claimed they had confirmed that at least some of the infrastructure in the attack was infected by Mirai malware. Mirai specialises in recruiting IoT devices, such as thermostats, fridges or, as has been identified in this case, webcams to botnets, which are then used to unleash a massive torrent of traffic on the victim - in this case, Dyn. In a statement, Dyn said it had observed tens-of-millions of discrete IP addresses associated with the Mirai botnet were part of the attack.