Akamai Identified As A Strong Performer Among Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Providers By Independent Research Firm

We are pleased to share that today Akamai has been cited as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Zero Trust eXtended Ecosystem Providers, Q4 2018 evaluation. In the report, Forrester evaluated how each vendor's portfolio maps and delivers on specific components of the ZTX framework. Akamai...

'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...

Mirai Co-Author Gets 6 Months Confinement, $8.6M in Fines for Rutgers Attacks

The convicted co-author of the highly disruptive Mirai botnet malware strain has been sentenced to 2,500 hours of community service, six months home confinement, and ordered to pay $8.6 million in restitution for repeatedly using Mirai to take down Internet services at Rutgers University, his alm...

DemonBot Fans DDoS Flames with Hadoop Enslavement

A Linux-based DDoS botnet dubbed DemonBot has been found enslaving Hadoop frameworks, using a vulnerability in Hadoop’s resource management tool to infect cloud servers with the botnet malware. Hadoop is a popular open-source framework, usually deployed in cloud environments, that organizations c...

Vesta control panel servers infected with DDoS malware after supply chain attack

By Waqas An open-source hosting panel software provider, Vesta Control Panel VestaCP, has admitted that the company became a victim of a supply chain attack. In an announcement made by VestaCP on its forum, it was revealed that the hacker managed to contaminate the source code of its project with...

New Drupalgeddon Attacks Enlist Shellbot to Open Backdoors

Researchers are warning of a new wave of cyberattacks targeting unpatched Drupal websites that are vulnerable to Drupalgeddon 2.0. What’s unique about this latest series of attacks is that adversaries are using PowerBot malware, an IRC-controlled bot also called PerlBot or Shellbot. Researchers a...

Prolexic Platform Enhancements - New APJ Scrubbing Centers and More

by Don Ng and Greg Burns This October, Akamai is announcing the turn-up of two additional Prolexic DDoS mitigation scrubbing centers in Singapore and Osaka, building on the nine previous scrubbing centers turned up this year and adding to our existing APJ footprint in Sydney, Tokyo, and Hong Kong...

What's New In Security

It's that time of year again. Here at our global headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the days are getting shorter at least in terms of sunrise and sunset. Gone are the 90 degree days of summer; 60 is the new normal. And as we are now in the midst of the final months of the year, Starbucks i...

How Shared Pools of Cloud Computing Power Are Changing the Way Attackers Operate

The transformation from racks of physical hardware hosting sites and services to cloud computing has provided organizations with better flexibility and reduced costs. Attackers have seen the benefits to this model and are also taking advantage of cloud computing to make more money, evade detectio...

Chaturbate: Unrestricted POST request size on roomlogin endpoint

POST requests to endpoint /roomlogin/ are not limited in size. While the main website login endpoint correctly limits the size of request, this endpoint does not. This can be a mean to perform a DOS attack. Steps To Reproduce: 1. has a password-protected stream. 2. Send a large POST request to...

Zero Trust Security Architectures - Akamai's Approach

This is Part 5 of a 5 part blog series. Jump to Part 1: Introduction Jump to Part 2: Network Micro-Segmentation Jump to Part 3: Software Defined Perimeter Jump to Part 4: Identity Aware Proxy Introduction In the first part of this blog series, we covered an overview of zero trust architecture...

The World’s Most Popular Coding Language Happens to be Most Hackers’ Weapon of Choice

Python will soon be the world’s most prevalent coding language. That’s quite a statement, but if you look at its simplicity, flexibility and the relative ease with which folks pick it up, it’s not hard to see why The Economist recently touted it as the soon-to-be most used language, globally...

Bitcoin Core Software Patches a Critical DDoS Attack Vulnerability

The Bitcoin Core development team has released an important update to patch a major DDoS vulnerability in its underlying software that could have been fatal to the Bitcoin Network, which is usually known as the most hack-proof and secure blockchain. The DDoS vulnerability, identified as...

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 Masterminds Helping FBI Snuff Out Cybercrime

The three masterminds behind Mirai – the infamous botnet known for taking down internet services in a 2016 DDoS attack – will work with the FBI in future cybercrime investigations as part of their sentencing for creating and operating the botnet. The three hackers, Paras Jha 22, of New Jersey,...

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...

Experts Bemoan Shortcomings with IoT Security Bill

An internet of things IoT bill that would mandate unique passwords for connected devices has been approved by the California state legislature. It will be the first potential connected device regulation to come into effect in the United States if California Gov. Jerry Brown decides to sign it —...