Cyberattack

60 Minutes Investigates Cybersecurity and the Reality of Sabotaging Critical Infrastructure

CBS's 60 Minutes aired a special report last night investigating how hackers can get into the computer systems that run crucial elements of the world's infrastructure, such as the power grids, water works or even a nation's military arsenal. From the report: "At the Sandia National Laboratories, Department of Energy security specialists like John Mulder try to hack into computer systems of power and water companies, and other sensitive targets in order to figure out the best way to sabotage them. It's all done with the companies' permission in order to identify vulnerabilities. In one test, they simulated how they could have destroyed an oil refinery by sending out code that caused a crucial component to overheat." more

CircleID’s Top 10 Posts of 2008

Here is a list of the most viewed news and blog postings that were featured on CircleID in 2008... Best wishes for 2009 and Happy New Year from all of us here at CircleID. more

Spam Fighters: Revenge is a Dish Best Left in the Freezer and Forgotten

There's no denying that the fight against spam attracts a lot of crazies, both pro- and anti-spam. One of the common attributes of the anti-spam kooks is that they often think in terms of somehow taking revenge against the spammers -- regardless of who else gets hurt along the way. In 2005, that revenge came in the form of BlueFrog, a service which purported to launch what can only be called denial of service attacks against spammers' web sites... This week, a company called SpamZa was hurriedly making a similar mistake... more

Oracle Launches Internet Intelligence Map Providing Insight Into the Impact of Internet Disruptions

Oracle today announced the launch of the Internet Intelligence Map website; a source available for free that provides country-level connectivity statistics based on traceroutes, BGP, and DNS query volumes on a single dashboard. more

Sledgehammer DDoS Gamification and Future Bugbounty Integration

Monetization of DDoS attacks has been core to online crime way before the term cybercrime was ever coined. For the first half of the Internet's life, DDoS was primarily a mechanism to extort money from targeted organizations. As with just about every Internet threat over time, it has evolved and broadened in scope and objectives. The new report by Forcepoint Security Labs covering their investigation of the Sledgehammer gamification of DDoS attacks is a beautiful example of that evolution. more

Equifax Hacked, Nearly Half of US Population Affected

In an announcement today, credit reporting giant Equifax revealed a cybersecurity incident potentially impacting approximately 143 million U.S. consumers. more

Clarivate Domain Survey Reveals a 10% Increase in Cyberattacks

Clarivate has once again surveyed global business leaders about the importance of domain names to their organizations, including the role of domains as intellectual property (IP) assets. The 2020 survey followed up on our 2019 survey, revealing key year-over-year trends in how organizations manage, secure and budget for domain names. In this blog, we review key trends from the new report. more

FBI, DHS Release Technical Details on North Korea’s DDoS Botnet Infrastructure

U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI today released a technical alert based joint-effort analysis of methods behind North Korea’s cyberattacks. more

Cyberattacks Against Abortion Clinics on the Rise

Over the past few years, cyberattacks and internet harassment have escalated against abortion clinics intended to disrupt services, intimidate providers and patients. more

Updates on the Georgian Cyber Attacks

This is an update of my previous post on the subject. To be honest here, no one truly knows what's going on in Georgia's Internet except for what can be glimpsed from outside, and what has been written by the Georgians on their blog (outside their country). They are probably a bit busy avoiding kinetic bombing... more

VoIP/IP Telephony in Estonia: Disrupted by Botnets?

With my post earlier this month about the possibility of SIP botnets [also featured here on CircleID], I've had a number of people asking about more information and wondering about the possible impacts. And while I will write more on botnets in general, as far as the potential impact of "botnets" in general, one need only look over at the current situation in Estonia... Now, perhaps Russia is behind the attack... perhaps not. There are obviously much larger political issues going on between the two states. more

Networks and Nationalization

This post isn't about -- or isn't only about -- the use of computer technology to commit crimes. It's more about the use of computer technology to commit war. A few weeks ago, I was part of a conversation about the legal issues cyberwarfare raises. We were talking about various scenarios -- e.g., a hostile nation-state uses cyberspace to attack the U.S. infrastructure by crippling or shutting down a power grid, air traffic control systems, financial system, etc. Mostly, we were focusing on issues that went to the laws of war, such as how and when a nation-state that is the target of a cyberattack can determine the attack is war, rather than cybercrime or cyberterrorism. more

Lessons to Be Learned from the Armada Collective’s DDoS Attacks on Greek Banks

'It could've been worse' is a fascinating expression. It implies that the incident in question obviously could have been worse than expected, however it also implies that it could have been better, ultimately leading to the conclusion that it was at least somewhat bad. So both fortunately and unfortunately for three Greek banks, the ransom DDoS attacks levied against them by hacker group the Armada Collective could have been worse. more

NTIA Issues RFC, Asks for Input on Dealing With Botnets and DDoS Attacks

NTIA issued a Request for Comments today asking for broad input from "all interested stakeholders, including private industry, academia, civil society, and other security experts," on actions against botnets and distributed attacks. more

Mobilizing Russian Population Attacking Georgia: Similar to the Estonian Incident?

It seems like the online Russian population is getting mobilized. Like a meme spreading on the blogosphere, the mob is forming and starting to "riot", attacking Georgia. This seems very similar to the Estonian incident, only my current guess is natural evolution rather than grass-roots implanted -- but I am getting more and more convinced of the similarities as more information becomes available. Determining exactly when the use of scripts by regular users started, is key to this determination. more