DDoS Attack

Thoughts on the Open Internet - Part 5: Security

Any form of public communications network necessarily exposes some information about the identity and activity of the user's of its services. The extent to which such exposure of information can be subverted and used in ways that are in stark opposition to the users' individual interests forms part of the motivation on the part of many users to reduce such open exposure to an absolute minimum. The tensions between a desire to protect the user through increasing the level of opacity of network transactions to third party surveillance, and the need to expose some level of basic information to support the functions of a network lies at the heart of many of the security issues in today's Internet. more

CAUCE Director Neil Schwartzman Wins Prestigious MAAWG Award

CAUCE Executive Director Neil Schwartzman won the prestigious Mary Litynski award on June 08, 2011 for his contributions to Internet anti-abuse efforts, including the passage of Canada's Anti-Spam Law. more

DNS-Based DDoS: Diverse Options for Attackers

Denial of service attacks have been around since the Internet was commercialized and some of the largest attacks ever launched relied on DNS, making headlines. But every day a barrage of smaller DNS-based attacks take down targets and severely stress the DNS ecosystem. Although DNS servers are not usually the target of attacks they are often disrupted so attention from operation teams is required. There is no indication the problem is going away and attackers continue to innovate. more

Dispersing a DDoS: Initial Thoughts on DDoS Protection

Distributed Denial of Service is a big deal -- huge pools of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as security cameras, are compromised by botnets and being used for large scale DDoS attacks. What are the tools in hand to fend these attacks off? The first misconception is that you can actually fend off a DDoS attack. There is no magical tool you can deploy that will allow you to go to sleep every night thinking, "tonight my network will not be impacted by a DDoS attack." more

Preventing Future Attacks: Alternatives In DNS Security Management - Part I

The October 21 DDoS attacks against the 13 root-name servers containing the master domain list for the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), (which reportedly took offline 9 of the 13 servers) remain a clear and daunting reminder of the vulnerabilities associated with online security. Many DNS authorities have named the most recent hit the largest DDoS attack against the root server system. Chris Morrow, network security engineer for UUNET, the service provider for two of the world's 13 root servers, recently told The Washington Post... more

Frequency of DDoS Attacks Risen by 40% While Duration of Attacks Decrease

The frequency of DDoS attacks has risen by 40% year on year while the duration of attacks decreased with 77% lasting ten minutes or less, according to a new report released by Corero Network Security. more

Responsibilities of the DNS: “Oh YES you will!”, “Oh NO you will not!”

What is the responsibility of the DNS? Should the DNS be responsible for policing traffic across its infrastructure? Should the blocking and blacklisting of names or throttling of query packets be the responsibility of the DNS? From experience I know my opening paragraph has started passionate debates in more than one section of this globe. We at CommunityDNS have found ourselves right in the middle of such heated debates. "Oh YES you will!", "Oh NO you will not!" more

The Human Factor in DDoS Attacks

Ripped from the headlines: A recent DDoS attack lasted an entire 60 days. In other news, a single site was attacked 218 times in Q2 alone. To those of us in the business of protecting Web infrastructure, these stories are hardly surprising. What's notable, though, is where they were reported, in The Financial, whose focus is banking and financial services, not technology. The reporters used the term "DDoS" as if it were as common as "hedge fund," something everyday business people, not just techies, grasp. It's this human element that caught my interest and got me thinking a little. more

The ETNO Proposal: Unintended Consequences

In the run up to the WCIT negotiations in December, the most talked about proposed change to the ITRs (International Telecommunications Regulations) is the ETNO proposal... Much of the discussion has focused on how this would deter innovation, hamper start-ups and make Internet access much more expensive. Overlooked thus far are the unintended consequences of how this proposal will affect the Content Distribution Network (CDN) industry while simultaneously making cybercrime much easier. more

Behind the Smoke Screen of Internet and International Infrastructure

In my recent write-up I start by discussing some recent threats network operators should be aware of, such as recursive DNS attacks. Then, a bit on the state of the Internet, cooperation across different fields and how these latest threats with DDoS also relate to worms and bots, as well as spam, phishing and the immense ROI organized crime sees. I try and bring some suggestions on what can be done better, and where we as a community, as well as specifically where us, the "secret hand-shake clubs" of Internet security fail and succeed. Over-secrecy, lack of cooperation, lack of public information, and not being secret enough about what really matters. more

DNS Industry Insider Summit: Fostering Collaboration Among DNS Leaders

This week, 17 individuals from about a dozen organizations in the DNS space met up in Manchester, NH at the Dyn Inc. headquarters for a first of its kind Summit for DNS industry insiders. Called "Inside Baseball," we wanted to bring people together from every spectrum of the DNS industry to inspire collaboration and innovation. more

The Spamhaus Distributed Denial of Service - How Big a Deal Was It?

If you haven't been reading the news of late, venerable anti-spam service Spamhaus has been the target of a sustained, record-setting Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack over the past couple of weeks... Of course, bad guys are always mad at Spamhaus, and so they had a pretty robust set-up to begin with, but whoever was behind this attack was able to muster some huge resources, heretofore never seen in intensity, and it had some impact, on the Spamhaus website, and to a limited degree, on the behind-the-scenes services that Spamhaus uses to distribute their data to their customers. more

FCC Accused of Intentionally Lying to Media Saying Net Neutrality Comment Flood Was Cyberattack

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been accused of purposely misleading several news organizations by claiming that the comment submission section of its website aimed to solicit opinions on net neutrality was taken offline by a cyberattack. more

New Type of DDoS Attack Targets Vulnerability in Universal Plug and Play Networking Protocol

A new type of DDoS attack takes advantage of an old vulnerability with the potential to put any company with an online presence at risk of attack warn researchers. more

Chuck Norris Botnet and Broadband Routers

Last week Czech researchers released information on a new worm which exploits CPE devices (broadband routers) by means such as default passwords, constructing a large DDoS botnet. Today this story hit international news... The spread of insecure broadband modems (DSL and Cable) is extremely wide-spread, with numerous ISPs, large and small, whose entire (read significant portions of) broadband population is vulnerable. more