Strategic Principles for Securing the IoT

DHS has released a set of Strategic Principles for Securing the Internet of Things IoT to help inform consumers, operators and manufacturers in their decision-making regarding networked and networkable devices. While the IoT can provide efficiency, convenience, and interactivity features that are...

Even A Single Computer Can Take Down Big Servers Using BlackNurse Attack

Yes, you only need a single laptop with a decent internet connection, rather a massive botnet, to launch overwhelming denial of service DoS attacks in order to bring down major Internet servers and modern-day firewalls. Researchers at TDC Security Operations Center have discovered a new attack...

BlackNurse Low-Volume DoS Attack Targets Firewalls

A type of denial of service attack relevant in the 1990s has resurfaced with surprising potency against modern-day firewalls. Dubbed a BlackNurse attack, the technique leverages a low-volume Internet Control Message Protocol ICMP -based attack on vulnerable firewalls made by Cisco, Palo Alto,...

5 Major Russian Banks Hit With Powerful DDoS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service DDoS attacks have risen enormously in past few months and, mostly, they are coming from hacked and insecure internet-connected devices, most commonly known as Internet of Things IoT. Recent DDoS attack against DNS provider Dyn that brought down a large chunk of the...

Using CIS Controls To Stop Your Network From Falling in With the Wrong Crowd

Earlier this month Kyle Flaherty wrote a post on the Rapid7 Community Blog about how Rapid7 came out on top for coverage of the Center for Internet Security CIS Top 20 Security Controls. In light of recent DDoS events Id like to take a little time to discuss at a high level what the controls are,...

DDoS Attack Takes Down Central Heating System Amidst Winter In Finland

Just Imaging — What if, you enter into your home from a chilling weather outside, and the heating system fails to work because of a cyber attack, leaving you in the sense of panic? The same happened late last month when an attack knocks heating system offline in Finland. Last week, a Distributed...

Wikileaks Gets DDoSed after Leaking 8,200 DNC Emails One Day before U.S. Election

With just two days before the presidential election, WikiLeaks late Sunday night published a new trove of emails apparently hacked from the Democratic National Committee DNC. The most recent dump of more than 8,000 emails came after the whistleblowing site, on a daily basis over last four weeks,...

More Insights On Alleged DDoS Attack Against Liberia Using Mirai Botnet

On Thursday, we compiled a story based on research published by a British security expert reporting that some cyber criminals are apparently using Mirai Botnet to conduct DDoS attacks against the telecommunication companies in Liberia, a small African country. In his blog post, Kevin Beaumont...

Blockchain Based DNS: dnschain

Blockchain Based DNS DNSChain makes it possible to be certain that you’re communicating with who you want to communicate with, and connecting to the sites that you want to connect to, without anyone secretly listening in on your conversations in between, DNSChain provides security properties that...

Test-Run DDoS Attacks Against Liberia Cease

Intermittent DDoS attacks powered by the largest of the many Mirai-powered botnets targeting the African nation of Liberia have ceased today. Researcher Kevin Beaumont who disclosed the attacks on Thursday said also that the domain controlling the attacker’s command and control infrastructure was...

Someone is Using Mirai Botnet to Shut Down Internet for an Entire Country

Note — We have published an updated article on what really happened behind the alleged DDoS attack against Liberia using Mirai botnet. Someone is trying to take down the whole Internet of a country, and partially succeeded, by launching massive distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks using a...

19-Year-Old Teenage Hacker Behind DDoS-for-Hire Service Pleads Guilty

Due to the worldwide promotion of Mirai botnet that knocked down half of the Internet last Friday, hackers and even script kiddies have started creating their own botnet networks by hacking millions of IoT devices and selling them as DDoS-for-hire service to overwhelm targets with data. A...

New IoT Botnet Malware Borrows From Mirai

Researchers have thrown back the covers on more malware infecting IoT devices for the purposes of building a botnet that carries out DDoS attacks. This sample has its roots in other IoT botnets such as Aidra, Bashlite and Mirai in that it attacks weak telnet credentials guarding devices and it’s...

New IoT Botnet Malware Discovered; Infecting More Devices Worldwide

The whole world is still dealing with the Mirai IoT Botnet that caused vast internet outage last Friday by launching massive distributed denial of service DDoS attacks against the DNS provider Dyn, and researchers have found another nasty IoT botnet. Security researchers at MalwareMustDie have...

Teenage Hacker Arrested For Disrupting 911 Service With DDoS Attack

Just last month, researchers explained how an attacker can knock the 911 service offline in an entire state by launching automated Distributed Denial of Service DDoS attacks using a botnet of just 6000 smartphones. But, doing so, in reality, could not only land public in danger but the attacker a...

Mirai Botnet Itself is Flawed; Hacking Back IoTs Could Mitigate DDoS Attacks

The infamous botnet that was used in the recent massive distributed denial of service DDoS attacks against the popular DNS provider Dyn, causing vast internet outage last Friday, itself is flawed. Yes, Mirai malware, which has already enslaved millions of Internet of Things IoT devices across 164...

Mirai Vulnerability Disclosed, But Exploits May Constitute Hacking Back

The Mirai botnet apparently has a weakness that could shut down its ability to flood targets with HTTP requests. But exploiting that vulnerability puts defenders in a gray area with regard to hacking back. Researchers at Invincea Labs discovered three vulnerabilities in Mirai, one of which is the...

On the Dyn DDoS Attack, Keen Team, and a Phony Windows Installer

Mike Mimoso and Chris Brook recap the news of the week, including the storylines around last week’s Dyn DDoS attack, Keen Team winning big again at Pwn2Own, and a fake Windows installer. Download: ThreatpostNewsWrapOctober282016.mp3 Music by Chris Gonsalves...

Dyn DDoS Could Have Topped 1 Tbps

As more time passes, researchers are getting insight into the size and structure of the DDoS attack against DNS provider Dyn last week, and the capabilities of the Mirai botnet. First, Dyn released a truncated post-mortem on the attack with admittedly some omissions as a law enforcement...

Friday's Massive DDoS Attack Came from Just 100,000 Hacked IoT Devices

Guess how many devices participated in last Friday's massive DDoS attack against DNS provider Dyn that caused vast internet outage? Just 100,000 devices. I did not miss any zeros. Dyn disclosed on Wednesday that a botnet of an estimated 100,000 internet-connected devices was hijacked to flood its...