The internet is like LA traffic on a Friday afternoon. It’s a parking lot and nobody is going anywhere fast. Today at least.
DDOS attacks which many believe are being launched using a robot army of 1.5 million surveillance cameras are hitting the DNS backbone of the internet causing websites everywhere to become unreachable.
The DDOS attacks this time are being launched against the services that tell traffic where to go – DNS services like DYN. When a user types in “www.zillow.com” into their browser, it is those services that direct the traffic to the right server.
I wrote about this attack a couple of weeks back which was originally discovered by Brian Krebs. Using sophisticated Malware, hackers have been able to commander cameras from all over the world to make hundreds and millions of request to sites all over the internet simultaneously.
It’s like everyone in LA deciding to leave work at the exact same time on Friday and hitting the freeway at the same time. The shear load of internet traffic is just too high to let good traffic go anywhere so when you request a website it can’t even connect. It is gridlock.
Is it Anonymous?
Cyber experts believe the massive coordinated attack may be in retaliation for the disruption of internet service to Julian Assange.
By the afternoon this seemed entirely possible that it was the case as Wiki submitted a tweet that asked the hackers to stop taking down the internet.
Others believe that it may be coordinated by Russia to create chaos in advance of the very controversial elections.
In any case, a website appeared on New World of Attackers Twitter Page which appeared to show the tool that allowed hackers across the world to start targeting websites.
Big Sites Are Down Everywhere
A quick check of Is it Down reveals the chaos across the web as hundreds of large websites are being impacted. This is one of the most massive and coordinated attacks in history.
Is this the Beginning?
The bad news is this is just the beginning of what is sure to become the new norm for the internet.
As ISP’s greatly expand the potential for faster and faster internet connections and downloads, Cyberhacker and BotNet traffic will continue to disrupt the entire internet ecosystem to make it slower than ever.
