FBI Denies Service to 15 DDoS-for-Hire Sites, Charges Operators

The Justice Department has taken 15 internet domains associated with DDoS-for-hire services offline, and has filed charges against three defendants who allegedly ran them. DDoS for hire or DDoS-as-a-service operations make it simple for any layperson to carry out DDoS attacks, flooding targets wi...

Newsmaker Interview: Troy Mursch on Top Botnet Trends

Botnet activity saw a healthy amount of dynamism in 2018. There were new types of devices being targeted, such as carrier-grade MikroTik hardware; and, there was also a host of new types of criminal activity surfacing making the point that botnets aren’t just for DDoS anymore. New types of...

Secure Critical Infrastructure Top of Mind for U.S.

When it comes to cyber-threats and defense, the U.S. government says that critical infrastructure threats are a growing concern. Rob Joyce, senior advisor of cybersecurity strategy for the National Security Agency NSA, said that while attacks targeting the systems that power the manufacturing,...

Bomb Threat Hoaxer, DDos Boss Gets 3 Years

The ringleader of a gang of cyber hooligans that made bomb threats against hundreds of schools and launched distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks against Web sites -- including KrebsOnSecurity on multiple occasions -- has been sentenced to three years in a U.K. prison, and faces the...

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Story of the year: miners

Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Statistics Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Top security stories Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018. Threat Predictions for 2019 Cryptocurrency miners that infect the computers of unsuspecting users essentially operate according to the same business model as...

Imperva and Amazon Partner to Help Mitigate Risks Associated With Cloud Migration

Helping our customers reduce the risks associated with migrating to the cloud, and preventing availability and security incidents, has been a major development focus for Imperva over the last several years. Why the partnership matters Although cloud service providers take a host of IT management...

Hacker Who DDoSed Sony, EA and Steam Gaming Servers Pleads Guilty

A 23-year-old hacker from Utah pleaded guilty this week to launching a series of denial-of-service DoS attacks against multiple online services, websites, and online gaming companies between 2013 and 2014. According to a Justice Department DoJ press release, Austin Thompson , a.k.a. "DerpTroll,"...

Hacker Who DDoSed Sony, EA and Steam Gaming Servers Pleads Guilty

A 23-year-old hacker from Utah pleaded guilty this week to launching a series of denial-of-service DoS attacks against multiple online services, websites, and online gaming companies between 2013 and 2014. According to a Justice Department DoJ press release, Austin Thompson, a.k.a. "DerpTroll,"...

'DerpTroll' Faces 10 Years in Prison for DDoSing Gaming Sites as a Teen

After a short but disruptive career knocking popular online gaming sites offline for sport, Austin Thompson, a.k.a. “DerpTroll,” has pleaded guilty to hacking charges. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years prison and a $250,000 fine. Thompson, a 23-year-old Utah resident, made his plea on Tuesda...

HSBC Data Breach Hits Online Banking Customers

International banking giant HSBC has reported that it was breached in October, as a result of a credential-stuffing attack. In a notice PDF filed with the state of California, the bank said that it became aware of some online accounts being accessed by unauthorized users between October 4 and 14...

ThreatList: Fewer Big DDoS Attacks in Q3, Overall Rate Holds Steady

When it comes to distributed denial of service DDoS attacks, the third quarter of 2018 marked an apparent lull in the action, with fewer huge, multi-day attacks than in previous quarters. Researchers however warn against having a false sense of security: The total number of attacks in the quarter...

DDoS Attacks in Q3 2018

News Overview The third quarter 2018 turned out relatively quiet in terms of DDoS attacks. "Relatively" because there were not very many high-level multi-day DDoS onslaughts on major resources. However, the capacities employed by cybercriminals keep growing year after year, while the total number...

Hackers behind Mirai botnet to avoid jail for working with the FBI

By Waqas Mirai has been known as one of the most powerful botnets comprised of millions of hacked Internet of Things IoT devices including routers, digital video recorders DVRs and security cameras. Mirai was also used by hackers to carry out one of the largest DDoS attacks on the servers of DynD...

Mirai Botnet Creators Helping FBI Fight Cybercrime to Stay Out of Jail

Three young hackers who were sentenced late last year for creating and spreading the notorious Mirai botnet are now helping the FBI to investigate other "complex" cybercrime cases in return to avoid their lengthy prison terms. Paras Jha, 21 from New Jersey, Josiah White, 20 from Washington, and...

Taking Stock: The Internet of Things, and Machine Learning Algorithms at War

It’s in the news every day; hackers targeting banks, hospitals, or, as we’ve come to fear the most, elections. Suffice to say then that cybersecurity has, in the last few years, gone from a relatively obscure industry – let's qualify that: not in the sense of importance, but rather how folks have...

Leader of DDoS-for-Hire Gang Pleads Guilty to Bomb Threats

A 19-year-old man from the United Kingdom who headed a cybercriminal group whose motto was "Feds Can't Touch Us" pleaded guilty this week to making bomb threats against thousands of schools. On Aug. 31, officers with the U.K.'s National Crime Agency NCA arrested Hertfordshire resident George...

Back to Basics: Why We Need to Encourage More Secure IoT Development

The Internet of Things IoT is radically reshaping the way we live and work. Before our very eyes, organizations are becoming more agile, efficient and cost effective to run, all while consumers marvel at the wonders of the smart home, fitness trackers and connected cars. There’s just one major...

Black Hat Exclusive Video: The IoT Security Threat Looms for Enterprises

IoT devices are everywhere – from connected smart-home gadgets to industrial IoT systems. And it’s not stopping anytime soon – consumer IoT spending is set to reach $62 billion in 2018, making it the fourth largest industry segment, according to market research firm IDC. Many of these IoT devices...

MariaDB: xmlrpc.php on mariadb.org can lead to DDOS and brute force attacks

XMLRPC was enabled and accessible on our website. Since we don't need any of the functionality provided by the Wordpress XMLRPC protocol, we were already trying to block XMLRPC requests to our site via our web server configuration, however, due to a syntactic error our enforcing rule did not appl...

DDoS attacks in Q2 2018

News overview Q2 2018 news includes: non-standard use of old vulnerabilities, new botnets, the cutthroat world of cryptocurrencies, a high-profile DDoS attack or not with a political subtext, the slashdot effect, some half-baked attempts at activism, and a handful arrests. But first things first...