DDoSers bombard Military root server
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Flooded for 12 hours At least three DNS root servers, including one maintained by the US Department of Defense, were flooded with data for about 12 hours in an attack that was notable more for its audacity than any noticeable degradation of internet traffic.â¦
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Servers that managed global internet traffic have been subjected to a concerted attack by hackers.
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(InfoWorld) - The good guys are taking a hit in the ongoing online war between the thugs who profit from phishing and malware, and those who work to stop them. For two weeks, Web sitesÂ such asÂ CastleCops.com, which offers help to those hit by malware and actively works to shut down malicious Web sites, have been under attack. In what's known as a DDoS (distributed denial of service), black hats are flooding CastleCops with a barrage of garbage data in an attempt to overwhelm the site and knock it offline. "It's the folks who are out there in the trenches getting hit," says Paul Laudanski, who founded CastleCops five and a half years ago Attack spreadsWhen the attack onÂ CastleCops.comÂ began on Aug. 29, Laudanski says, the site went down for a few hours as he scrambled to apply countermeasures. His site came back up, but the attack soon spread to other helpful sites such as 419eater.com, fraudwatchers.org, scam.com, scamfraudalert.com, and scamwarners.com. Most of these sites are currently unresponsive. When the hosting provider for another site, aa491.org, dropped the site because the attack became too much for the provider, CastleCops gave aa419.org a home. CastleCops went down again under the combined attack, but is back up again. The sites are all being hit byÂ botnets,Â corralled networks of malware-infected computers that can be issued commands by a central controller, or botherder. Botnets are most often used to send money-making spam, but they can also launch DoS attacks where each infected PC sends a steady stream of traffic at a victim site. CastleCops is shouldering the brunt of 20,000 bots as of today, and more than 1,000 additional bots join the fray each day. Mystery motiveLaundanski says he and others who work at these sites, many of which are not-for-profit, are still unsure about the attack's rationale. And he's likewise uncertain about whether it's one group or many behind it all. He's been able to gather some details, but doesn't want to share them while the threat continues and let his attackers know what he's been able to find out. But Paul Sop, CTO of Prolexic, a company that defends clients against DDoS attacks, says "the prevailing street theory is that these guys are having an effect." Their advice is helping malware or phishing victims, and their investigations are helping to shut down criminal operations."So the botnet guys are targeting them," he says. Security sites, including CastleCops, have been targeted in the past, but attacks are on the rise, Sop says. In the past five months, he says, there has been an increased focus on attacking organizations on the front lines who try to fight back against the crooks. Strengthened resolveBut according to Laudanski, who has started aÂ new online forumÂ documenting the ongoing battles, the attacks may backfire. "The criminals are in it for the money," he says. "It's a huge business for them. [But] we're in it for the feeling that we get being on the side of right." So this assault shows that "these sites are definitely doing something right," he says, "because we've got the attention of these scammers. It gives us greater resolve." PC WorldÂ is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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An attack combining malicious codes on Web sites and end-user laziness could compromise millions of routers still configured with their out-of-the-box defaults.
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You've uploaded warez onto the wrong server, buddy
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The worst attack in years on the Internet's infrastructure, which slowed traffic but failed to bring down the Web, used infected computers around the world as &quot;zombies,&quot; security experts said.
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These armies of zombie PCs are used by cybercriminals for sending spam. Part of a series on hot security topics.
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Universal plug and prey Security mavens have uncovered a design flaw in most home routers that allows attackers to remotely control the devices by luring an attached computer to a booby-trapped website.â¦
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Blog: Thousands of Web sites worldwide now host links to malicious code servers.
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On 20 December 2004, a fast-moving Internet worm called Santy began attacking Web servers using the popular Google search engine. The Santy worm exploits a security vulnerability in phpBB, an open-source bulletin
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Three of the 13 computers used to manage global internet traffic are hacked overnight. It's one of the biggest attacks since 2002. By the Associated Press.
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A mass attack ongoing for the past month against Linux Apache Web servers has become increasingly successful, according to a security researcher monitoring its progress.
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Online attackers have briefly disrupted service on at least two of the 13 "root" servers that are used to direct traffic on the Internet.
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Good-guy sites, like CastleCops.com, are suffering Web site outages from distributed denial-of-service attacks.
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NameDrive weathers DDoS assault Domain name parking service NameDrive restored its services on Friday after coming under a concerted and ferocious denial of service attack from unidentified hackers.â¦
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Blog: Low ransom request and a self-termination date on the code suggest this is a test attack.
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Malware arrives in an e-mail message, launches denial of service attack.