Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites • Hacker News Board

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#171

Post by takeda » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 3:47 AM UTC

atmosx wrote: post #121

stcredzero wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Azure and Google would like to gain a competitive advantage over AWS, then I would suggest this: Build out a suite of tools for fighting DDOS. Enable private consultants and companies to provide this as a service. Do this in such a way, that cloud customers save money and have to worry about less. Hell, let companies jump in structured as insurance companies! Also bring in cooperation with law enforcement and use…

> Enable private consultants and companies to provide this as a service. If I am an AWS customer I expect AWS to handle/prevent DDoS, same way as they do with S3 to achieve 11 9's availability (the files are saved in multiple AZs in the same region - Glacier IIRC copy files on different regions to avoid data loss in case of physical disaster). One of the reason for choosing AWS is because AMZ has deep pockets and has…

> do with S3 to achieve 11 9's availability

I see so many people confused about this. Eleven nines is their durability guarantee, their availability that they guarantee is only 99.99%

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#172

Post by matt4077 » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 3:50 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #96

cm2187 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also what amazed me is that he would casually threaten to strike Russia. It seems that no one considers these attacks as an act of war. But that's what they are.

If that's what they are, why aren't we already at war with Russia?

Would you like to be at war with Russia?

Did you know you're at war with North Korea?

Did you know you're not at war, and have never been, with Afghanistan?

Meaning of all that: what is or isn't "war", an "act of war" or "is" is up to people to define, and international law is easily ignored whenever states think that's a good idea.

The best definition is probably the UN's "act of aggression", see http://www.un-documents.net/a29r3314.htm. That definition does not include provisions for such situations – the only (theoretically) unarmed act of aggression is a blockade.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#173

Post by cderwin » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 3:58 AM UTC

netcommentator wrote: post #128

Given national security interests, we need new laws: 1. IOT devices should not ship with default passwords. 2. Internet infrastructure companies should not be allowed to get "too big to fail".

As far as (2) goes, they actually need to be too big too fail. Otherwise, it's plainly impossible for internet infrastructure companies to be able to financially weather ddos attacks like this. These sorts of attacks are very expensive to mitigate, and part of the way we can do that is to centralize under services like AWS and collectively pay for ddos protection (short of the government doing so and separating our network from those of major malicious foreign actors').

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#174

Post by orthoganol » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 3:59 AM UTC

orthoganol wrote: post #76

WL's Twitter has claimed it was WL supporters. Although no one can really confirm what's going on with them since the Ecuadorian embassy events the other day.

Is this really deserving of the downvotes? I just quoted what they tweeted regarding the outage. It seems outlandish, but it is what they stated.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#175

Post by pinebox » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 4:00 AM UTC

optionalparens wrote: post #132

cm2187 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Espionage is stealing data. Disrupting utility services is an act of war, whether it is shutting down an electricity power plant, cutting communications, or any other act of sabotage.

This is true, but in fun hypothetical talks with various tech friends over the decades, we often talked about in relation to Internet services in particular, taking down services and such can actually help with hacking (i.e. stealing data) efforts. How? Why? Firstly, probing as the article mentions does yield plenty of valuable intel which is the core for espionage. Secondly, we often joked that companies have such f…

Doesn't seem hypothetical or unlikely at all:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/symantec-data-stealing-hackers-...

IIRC this tactic was used during the massive Target data breach in 2014.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#176

Post by jtl999 » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 4:03 AM UTC

nstj wrote: post #106

capecodcarl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Google already have the infrastructure to deal with an attack of this magnitude? I remember recently reading about Krebs on Security moving to Google's Project Shield service: http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-rescues-krebs-on-securit...

afaik Shield is for select journalists only, not for typical web infrastructure.

https://support.google.com/projectshield/answer/6358116?hl=e...

> My website is on Blogger, Google Sites, or Google App Engine. Am I eligible?

    > As Google products, these sites already have similar DDoS protection to Project Shield. Your website would not need to be set up with Project Shield.

Wonder if that answer includes Compute Engine. Doubt it.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#177

Post by matt4077 » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

gamegod wrote: post #45

Irony alert: > "But technology providers in the United States could suffer blowback. As Dyn fell under recurring attacks on Friday, Mr. York, the chief strategist, said such assaults were the reason so many companies are pushing at least parts of their infrastructure to cloud computing networks, to decentralize their systems and make them harder to attack." Pushing your infrastructure to cloud computing is not decent…

I'm pretty sure DDos against http resources have become quite hard to pull of, which is why there was string of attempts to blackmail smaller email provider but nothing like it happens to similar startups relying on the web. Even the Linode attacks are only possible because they're highly target at a few critical systems there.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#178

Post by peterwwillis » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 4:07 AM UTC

So. Can we start talking about changing internet protocols to strengthen the integrity of internet network services against DoS attack?

Currently, the internet is very very open (as long as you don't live in certain countries). A baby monitor in Kansas can send arbitrary traffic to a router connecting a major financial services company in Hong Kong to an internet backbone. The idea, in a very hippy, world peace kinda way, is nice. But... probably not something we need to happen, much less should want to happen or allow, if good sense prevailed.

We have hacks in place that can prevent that particular situation from becoming too much trouble, but if you have enough baby monitors, something somewhere is going to choke. And really this is the point to me: you [as the network service provider] should not have to have carrier-grade infrastructure to avoid this scenario. If Casey Brogrammer wants to prop up a start-up on her DSL line (do people still have DSL?) she should be able to without fear of DoS. How do we do that?

I have no idea. But i'm betting it would require some rearchitecting of the internet and heavily modified protocols. Personally, I think the global BGP tables are gross (and, let's face it people, depending on RAM to perpetually increase in size while simultaneously decreasing in cost ad infinitum is not a realistic scaling mechanism), I think the many flaws in modern tcp/ip protocols are not designed with specific enough use cases in mind, and that the generalist design of the modern Internet has become more of a hindrance to efficiency and progress than a benefit. There is absolutely no requirement that we keep engineering ourselves into a corner, and IPv6 sure as shit isn't going to solve it.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#179

Post by intrasight » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 4:07 AM UTC

gamegod wrote: post #45

Irony alert: > "But technology providers in the United States could suffer blowback. As Dyn fell under recurring attacks on Friday, Mr. York, the chief strategist, said such assaults were the reason so many companies are pushing at least parts of their infrastructure to cloud computing networks, to decentralize their systems and make them harder to attack." Pushing your infrastructure to cloud computing is not decent…

It's harder, but you can distribute your web resources across multiple cloud providers

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#180

Post by seanharr11 » Sat, Oct 22, 2016, 4:09 AM UTC

Harold Martin held without bail (high risk of flight) accused of theft of 20 years worth of government (NSA) tools/data, Trump stating he will not concede the election, tens of millions of IoT devices used in DDOS attack, Assange (wikileaks originator) cut off from internet, DNC hacked and exposed.

A conspiracy theorists dream.