Denial of Service attacks are experiencing a surge in power and duration in the first months of 2013, with Iran joining China and The United States as a top source of the crippling online attacks. The power of distributed denial of service (or DDos) attacks – measured in packets per second – jumped 718 percent in the first three months of 2013, compared to the final three months of 2012, the security firm Prolexic reported on Wednesday. The average bandwidth used in DD0S attacks reached 32.4 million packets per second, overwhelming Internet service providers (ISPs), carriers and content delivery networks designed to mitigate the effects of sudden Internet traffic surges. The data comes from Prolexic’s DD0S Report for the first quarter of 2013. That firm, based in Hollywood, Florida, has become a go-to firm for companies that find their web sites on the receiving end of DDoS attacks. The average attack bandwidth totaled […]
Banking
The New Normal: Wednesday Is DDoS Day At Citi
How common are crippling denial of service attacks aimed at Western banks? Here’s one sign: Wednesday is unofficially “DDoS day” at Citi, according to a Senior Vice President for Information Security at the financial services powerhouse. Speaking on Wednesday at an event hosted by Perdue University, Mamani Older told an audience at CERIAS 2013 that massive distributed denial of service – or DDoS – attacks have become “business as usual” for Citi, and that those launching the attacks have fallen into a predictable schedule of attacks. Hump day, she said, is Citi’s turn to fend off a torrent of Internet traffic designed to interrupt the bank’s operations and sever its connections to its customers, she said. “We should be getting hit right now,” she said. Older was speaking on a panel on the topic of “security metrics” and “security analysis.” The panel was part of CERIAS 13, an annual information security symposium […]
Messy And Loud Hack In South Korea Doesn’t Look State Sponsored
A researcher who has studied the malicious software used in the attacks on media outlets and banks in South Korea this week said the attacks were coordinated, but messy and loud, without many of the hallmarks of a state sponsored hacking operation. Richard Henderson, a Security Strategist at Fortilabs at Fortinet Inc. said that the malware used in the attack was programmed to begin operating at 2:00pm local time, suggesting that those behind it had planned their operation for weeks or months before launching it. Still, Henderson said many details of the attack make it dissimilar from so-called “advanced persistent threat” or APT-style hacks that are carried out by foreign governments or groups working on their behalf. Henderson said that Fortinet analysts first obtained a copy of the malware on March 19, a day before the attacks. Researchers there had already identified the “time bomb” hidden in the code, which was […]
DPRKurious: Is North Korea Really Behind Cyber Attacks On The South?
The news keeps coming out of South Korea, where a mysterious rash of hacks and virus infections early Thursday compromised tens of thousands of machines running at banks, broadcasters and other firms, erasing data and causing widespread disruption. Here’s the latest: South Korean Officials “Strongly Suspect” North Korea South Korean government officials made their most direct statements to date (albeit anonymously) on the possible source of the attack, saying that they had a “strong suspicion” that the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was responsible. Speaking to the YonHap News Agency, the official, identified as a “high ranking official in the office of President Cheong Wa Dae,” refused to elaborate. However, he may have been referring to the preliminary results of the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) which traced the malicious code responsible for crippling computers at broadcasters and banks to an IP address in China. South Korean […]
Update: Destructive Hacks Hit South Korean Media, Banks
Editor’s Note: Updated to include information from AlienVault on the attacks. – PFR 3/20/2013 Destructive cyber attacks against media outlets and banks in South Korea have ratcheted up tensions on the Korean Peninsula, with charges that the government of reclusive North Korea was behind the hacks. According to a report in South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency, the attacks began at 2:00PM local time in South Korea and affected the computer networks of three broadcasters and two banks. Broadcasters KBS, MBC and YTN all reported that their computer networks were “halted” at that time. Shinhan Bank and Nonghyup made similar reports to the National Police Agency (NPA), according to Yonhap. Unlike past distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that are believed to have been launched by the DPRK against the South, the latest incursions come at a time of extreme military tension on the peninsula, and caused damages to South Korean […]
