DDoS Attack

South Korean Ruling Party Chief Offers Resignation Amidst DDoS Scandal

South Korea's ruling party chairman has offered to resign over a cyberattack reported to have been orchestrated by an aide to one of the conservative party's lawmakers. The move comes after police concluded the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on the election watchdog's website on the day of by-elections in October was masterminded solely by a 27-year-old aide to the ruling Grand National Party. The aide has also admitted to orchestrating a similar cyberattack on the website of Park Won-soon, who was elected Seoul mayor in the Oct. 26 elections. more

US Congress Website Recovers from a Crippling 3-Day DNS Attack

A number of websites owned and operated by the United States Congress are recovering from a three-day DNS attack. more

Can Hybrid DDoS Mitigation Stop Large Application Layer Attacks?

We recently received an email from a customer asking about hybrid DDoS mitigation and its ability to stop large application layer attacks. Here's the truth: Hybrid DDoS mitigation works and can stop large application layer attacks. Hybrid DDoS mitigation typically involves a purpose-built DDoS mitigation appliance or software on dedicated hardware that sits immediately in front of or behind an enterprise's edge router. more

Identify DDoS Attacks with External Performance Monitoring (Part 2 of 3)

In Part One of this series, we examined internal server, network and infrastructure monitoring applications. Now let's take a look at another way to capture DDoS information: external performance monitoring... Unlike network/infrastructure tools - which are usually installed inside a customer's network - external performance monitoring solutions are typically provided by a third party and leverage monitoring locations from around the world. more

Iran and the Internet: Uneasy Standoff

We've received enough interest about our previous notes on Iranian Internet connectivity that I wanted to give a brief update, and some reflections. In short: Iran is still on the Internet. As the crisis deepens, people are literally risking their lives by continuing to use the Internet for coordination and communication. more

DDoS Mitigation: A Blend of Art and Science

As DDoS attacks become larger, more frequent and complex, being able to stop them is a must. While doing this is part science, a matter of deploying technology, there is also an art to repelling sophisticated attacks. Arbor Networks, Citrix and others make great gear, but there's no magic box that will solve all your problems for you. Human expertise will always be a crucial ingredient. more

Swimming Australia Website Comes Under DDoS Attack in Wake of Allegations Against Chinese Swimmer

The website of Swimming Australia has come under DDoS attack just hours after the Australian Bureau of Statistics went back online following a similar attack bringing the online census initiative to a halt. more

Hosters: Is Your Platform Being Used to Launch DDoS Attacks?

As anyone who's been in the DDoS attack trenches knows, large multi-gigabit attacks have become more prevalent over the last few years. For many organizations, it's become economically unfeasible to provision enough bandwidth to combat this threat. How are attackers themselves sourcing so much bandwidth? more

U.S. Federal Government Response Too Slow to Friday’s Internet Attack, Warns Cybersecurity Official

"We often refer to the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland that caught on fire over 20 times before we actually did something to introduce the Clean Water Act," says Allan Friedman, the director of cybersecurity initiatives for the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), in conference call on Monday. more

Blocking Amplification Attacks: Sometimes the Incentives Work Against You

Since the end of last year, amplification attacks have been increasingly used by attackers and received heavy media coverage. Everyday protocols not given much thought before, like Network Time Protocol (NTP), can be asked in a very short remote command to send a very large response (list of 600 clients last connected to the NTP server) to a spoofed IP address (the target) by the requestor/attacker. more

Sudanese Nationals Charged in Global Cyberattack Campaign

Two Sudanese nationals have been indicted for allegedly leading Anonymous Sudan, a cybercriminal group responsible for over 35,000 Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks targeting critical infrastructure worldwide. more

Liberia’s Internet Brought to a Halt After Facing Multiple Mirai-Based Attacks

The entire internet infrastructure of the African nation of Liberia is distributed by the same weapon used to cause the historic cyberattack just two weeks ago. more

Australia’s First Online Census Halted Due to Multiple DDoS Attacks

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports deliberate and "malicious" attacks from offshore, designed to sabotage nation's first online 2016 Census. more

My Top Takeaways from DNS-OARC 24

The 24th DNS-OARC meeting was held last week in Buenos Aires -- a two-day DNS workshop with amazingly good, consistent content. The programme committee are to be congratulated on maintaining a high quality of presentations. Here are my picks of the workshop. They fall into three groups, covering themes I found interesting... These presentations related to the ongoing problem of DNS as a source of reflection attacks, or a victim of attempted DDoS... more

Average DDoS Attacks Now Large Enough to Take Most Organizations Completely Offline

Arbor Networks today released its Global DDoS Attack Data for the first half of 2016 affirming continued escalation in both the size and frequency of denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. more