[10/21/16] Massive DDOS Attack Knocks Huge Websites Offline - The Russians, probably.

Internet users around the world, but mostly in the US, reported that some top websites were not loading on Friday morning.

The affected sites included Amazon, Twitter, Etsy, Github, and Spotify.

The issue was mostly resolved at 9:20 a.m. ET, but at 12:07 p.m. ET, the issue started to crop up again, according to one of the companies at the center of the apparent cyber attack.

The issue appears to have something to do with DNS hosts — in particular, Dyn, one of the biggest DNS companies.

Domain Name Servers are a core part of the internet's backbone. They translate what you type into your browser —www.businessinsider.com, for example — into IP addresses that computers can understand.

Dyn said on Friday that it suffering a DDoS attack, or a distributed denial of service. That basically means hackers are overwhelming Dyn's servers with useless data and repeated load requests, preventing useful data — the Twitter IP address, for example — from getting through.

No group has taken credit for the DDoS attack yet. The Department of Homeland Security is monitoring the attack, Politico's Eric Geller reports.

http://www.businessinsider.com/amaz...-and-etsy-down-in-apparent-dns-attack-2016-10

Who did it? Even posting this, Twitter is running like shit for me.

 

[Rou]

Oh, just noticed that it did affect me, somewhat. A university service was knocked offline due to this, but as far as I can tell it's nothing that I'm currently using.

 

[Splendid]

These attacks are common, you just don't hear about it because they are mitigated.

I know that they're common, I think from the context of was clear that I was only talking about attacks large enough to actually do something.

 

[Piss Clam]

I know that they're common, I think from the context of was clear that I was only talking about attacks large enough to actually do something.

OK, but you can't patch stupid or poor design.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

I know that they're common, I think from the context of was clear that I was only talking about attacks large enough to actually do something.

And in this case, it was big enough to cause a reaction. Remember, this attack managed to knock out sites like Amazon and twitter. It's amazing they didn't try to attack Google.

Which is why I can't believe the "OMG RUSSIA DID IT!" cries. If this was an attack from Russia, we probably wouldn't even be talking about the attack at this moment.

 

[RP 520]

If this is Russia, it's probably in retaliation for RT getting its accounts in the UK frozen a few days back. Though seeing how the world is today and how internet works it could almost anyone from Russia, China, Iran, etc.

 

[Piss Clam]

If you are interested these are some of the public places you can find vulnerabilities.

Couple those with people that will download codecs to view a video on some site, then you are in a no win scenario.

http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/
http://cve.mitre.org/cve/cve.html

 

[RJ MacReady]

If this was an attack from Russia, we probably wouldn't even be talking about the attack at this moment.

Lol no. The Russians do whatever the fuck they want, deny responsibility and claim anyone who says otherwise is a Russophobe. It's been Putin's entire strategy for literally years.

What does surprise me is that the U.S. is too pussy to strike back. The NSA has more funding and tech than the Russians and Chinese combined and they never perform cyberattacks on either of them. Alibaba for example would be a ripe target. You can bet Putin or Jinping would throw a shitfit if the U.S. actually got the balls to attack their internet instead of remaining passive.

 

[RP 520]

Lol no. The Russians do whatever the fuck they want, deny responsibility and claim anyone who says otherwise is a Russophobe. It's been Putin's entire strategy for literally years.

What does surprise me is that the U.S. is too pussy to strike back. The NSA has more funding and tech than the Russians and Chinese combined and they never perform cyberattacks on either of them. Alibaba for example would be a ripe target. You can bet Putin or Jinping would throw a shitfit if the U.S. actually got the balls to attack their internet instead of remaining passive.

The issue is that if the U.S. did retaliate on a noticeable scale, then you'd have possible escalating counter attacks which could end with the internet getting fucked over entirely and possibly a few powerplants exploding or something.

 

[DuskEngine]

The DNS root zone is no longer managed by the US, remember. Dyn is American, but an attack on the DNS system at large is now an attack on.....an international institution, I guess?

 

[Piss Clam]

The issue is that if the U.S. did retaliate on a noticeable scale, then you'd have possible escalating counter attacks which could end with the internet getting fucked over entirely and possibly a few powerplants exploding or something.

Come on. They'd just spam CP and videos of crazy Russian drivers. I think we are safe.

 

[RJ MacReady]

The issue is that if the U.S. did retaliate on a noticeable scale, then you'd have possible escalating counter attacks which could end with the internet getting fucked over entirely and possibly a few powerplants exploding or something.

The world's headed in that direction no matter what. These attacks are happening expressly so whoever's doing them can learn how to conduct mass cyberwarfare and by not learning likewise the U.S. is placing itself at a critical disadvantage.

Also, by not retaliating the U.S. lets them learn at their own pace and emboldens them to get more aggressive because they know there's no consequences. China is allowed to steal top secret military data on the regular and all the U.S. does is wag its finger.

 

[Florence]

THE RUSSIANS! Why? Because... uh Trump and Putin hate the internet.... or something..... THEY HATE FREEDOM, THEY HATE OUR WAY OF LIFE. The SJW Illuminati.

 

[Android raptor]

I'm just sad they didn't take down tumblr. If the Russians take down tumblr they'd be doing to world a favor.

 

[CWCchange]

It's revenge for cutting down Assange's internet.

Why is it every time Russia is mentioned on this forum a spergfest ensues?

 

[Brandobaris]

Looks like Russia needs money then.

 

[Chiang Kai-shek]

I bet the notorious hacker known as 4chan is responsible for this!

 

[AnOminous]

The DNS root zone is no longer managed by the US, remember. Dyn is American, but an attack on the DNS system at large is now an attack on.....an international institution, I guess?

In this case it's not the root nameservers. Just a particularly large commercial DNS service.

 

[DuskEngine]

In this case it's not the root nameservers. Just a particularly large commercial DNS service.

If it is a dry run, it could very plausibly be in preparation for an attack on the nameservers themselves.

 

[Brandobaris]

It's revenge for cutting down Assange's internet.

Why is it every time Russia is mentioned on this forum a spergfest ensues?

Because Russia is a convenient scapegoat. Assange in an interview says the murder of Seth Rich has made many of his sources concerned in an interview.

Spoiler

Do you know who Seth Rich was? He was the Voter Expansion Data Director at the Democratic National Committee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich

Ergo, most of the info wikileaks is obtaining is from whistleblowers from the Government. Russia is just a convenient country to place blame on since currently we are contesting Syria, and if you can get the public on board with hating Russia, it makes overt military action more palatable to the public.

 

[Marvin]

The Chinese are also abysmal programmers. The Russians actually aren't that bad.

Russians are good at exploits. They're not amazing programmers though. Aside from the occasional rainman, they just produce a lot of mediocre PHP.

Like even people's work I respected, the interesting ideas were still clogged behind a fog of mediocre PHP. This is because PHP is old, and by this point, well documented enough for Russians to understand. But they're forever going to be lagging behind, technology wise, because the cutting edge is always in English.

Spoiler: international programming sperging

As far as the Chinese go (and to a smaller extent, Russia): my pet theory is that the language barrier is going to be a long term hindrance for non-English speakers. Technical documentation is in English first and foremost. Translations take time, but more importantly, they suck. Programmers use all sorts of ordinary terms, but in goofy contexts that are really difficult to translate. Programmers are very euphemistic.

Almost all foreign programmers just learn English. And if your language isn't alphabet-based, like Chinese, you're going to have long running problems in basically everything you do. (Or, I guess the flipside of that is that Chinese programmers are probably experts at handling unicode issues?) Foreign programmers even still comment their programs / pick variable names in English.

Heh, a notable exception is the missing T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM error in PHP, which is hebrew for double colon.

Like, I'll run into code that's written in a foreign language once in awhile, but it's always of low quality. The reason is because of the lack of peer review. You don't want to just have a brilliant programmer write a brilliant program, you want to have a brilliant program checked over by many other brilliant programmers.