A cyber attack conducted in several waves, has seriously disrupted the functioning of the internet since Friday in the United States, depriving millions of people of access to many sites .
The victims are many. Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, eBay, Netflix… Each of these sites has had its activity slowed down by this attack. The users, themselves, have found themselves disoriented in front of the internet truly “broken”. However, none of these sites was truly intended by hackers. They are taken, in reality, the company Dyn, which redirects the flow from the internet to hosters and translated in any way the names of sites into IP addresses. Many sites are only accessible via the servers of Dyn, which explains why they have suffered the attack without being targeted directly. The mode of operation, named “denial of service”, is to saturate a connection service to make it unreachable.
Attack very elaborate
The first attack was launched at around 11: 10 a.m. before being followed by several attacks in succession, spread throughout the day Friday. At 21: 30, Dyn reported on its website that its engineers were continuing to neutralize further attacks. “It is an attack on very elaborate. Each time that we neutralize, they adapt,” said Kyle Owen, an official of the company. Given the magnitude of this attack, an investigation has been launched by the FBI and the department of homeland security american. If the attacks of this type are common, what is less clear is that the pirates managed to weaken a major player in the industry, such as Dyn. What awakens the fears of the specialists of the digital. “When I see such an attack, I tell myself that it is a State that is behind,” said Eric o’neill, in charge of strategy for the it security firm Carbon Black and ex-in charge of the fight against espionage in the FBI. “The Internet continues to be based on p rotocols and an infrastructure designed before cyber security was a problem,” lamented Ben Johnson, ex-hacker for the us agency of intelligence (NSA). This attack betrays a vulnerability well known in the structure of the internet”, he added.
attacks of this type explode
The computer attacks and other acts of piracy are already in full resurgence in the United States and in other industrialized countries. But, according to a report published by the company Verisign, it is more the case of attacks by “denial of service”. In effect, they would have been up 85 % in the world between end 2014 and end 2015. In France, the OVH company, had been the subject of a violent assault of this type by means of networks of connected objects, that can be mobilized without the knowledge of their owner. “These attacks, in particular, with the expansion of connected objects and unsecured, will continue to harass our organizations,” predicts Ben Johnson. According to the organization, the consequences can be disastrous.
connected objects in question
The attack has highlighted the dangers posed by the growing use of connected objects, which can be used without the knowledge of their owners, to block access to a site. These machines, pirated, form a network of so-called “botnets”, or a kind of army ready to engage in attacks of scale. Connected objects and a priori, completely harmless, such as coffee machines or refrigerators can be used by hackers. In December 2015, an attack of this type has collected 18 000 devices.
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