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Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

nytimes.com

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Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#241

Post by jontas »

speedplane wrote: post #218
jacquesm wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it means that if you store your data there that there is a .000000001% chance that you will lose all of it.

Is that true? How can they possibly measure a probability event so small? If every human in the world was their customer, then .05 humans would lost heir data?

I don't know much about actuarial math but I think this number is for insurance policies more than anything else. It could be based on something like the rate of hardware failures they experience now amortized over a long period and many customers, and then adjusted to account for redundancy.

As a very simplified example, imagine they are expecting to lose 2 servers every day, this percentage might be the probability of those two servers storing the same exact object (and thus, losing it irretrievably).

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#242

Post by meowface »

cpr wrote: post #99
meowface wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's espionage, not necessarily an act of war. The US government is threatening to strike back with more espionage. (If they haven't already...)

Hillary specifically promised to treat a cyberattack with all possible responses including military. This woman is dangerous.

She and Obama were referring to cyberattacks that cripple critical infrastructure. Like shutting down power grids.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#244

Post by woliveirajr »

codedokode wrote: post #118
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #15

We seem to be needing more concerted action on what is a consumer minimum standard for an internet connected device. Consumer devices have to be more secure because if the low user skill level - and interest. I am always reluctant to say "there should be a law against it" but frankly if we cannot mandate minimum standards of uogradbility and security for devices we will just keep handing over our devices to the first…

Why rely on end devices? The infrastructure itself should be designed so that it cannot be broken that easily. Maybe we should return to metered connections, maybe we should implement a protocol to control routing. The Internet has grown without proper planning using a lot of "quick and dirty" hacks (for example NATs, peering agreements) and today we just see the result. It reminds me of poorly designed email protoco…

I'd say [i]the Internet has grown using a lot of "quick and dirty" hacks [/i]

If internet should wait until all use cases were created, it wouldn't exist. It's power was exactly that people could think on how to create things on top of was available. Many RFCs came afterwards.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#245

Post by collinmanderson »

sophacles wrote: post #240
tyre wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With ISPs (at least in the US) moving towards data caps, this is becoming a reality. It won't fix the problem. DDOS attacks via IOT don't have to send much data per request. If my devices are doing an extra 10Mb/hour, I won't notice. 1000 homes is 10Gb/hour and that's just a few blocks in a city. 100,000 homes seems easy to hit, which is a petabyte of data per hour. It's death by a thousand paper cuts. If my internet…

I think this is missing one component though. I agree I wouldn't, you wouldn't, in fact most people wouldn't debug their refrigerator over a dollar a month bandwidth bill. I would however take into consideration bandwidth bill effects of what I buy. By comparison: today I buy LED lightbulbs and energy efficient appliances because they will have a long term cost impact on my electricity bill.

Right, though the IoT manufacturers probably aren't going to factor in internet attacks when advertising bandwidth usage. :)

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#246

Post by Chirael »

One of the Krebs articles mentioned an idea of a certification (similar to UL) which could be on products like DVRs and web cams. You can't ever certify something as completely secure of course, but the certification could indicate "firmware updatable", "no hard-coded default passwords" and "where there are passwords they are generated randomly and unique to each specific product" (not family of products). Maybe even "consumer can change all passwords to new randomly generated values". I can't say that all or even many consumers will care, but if ISPs stepped up and started emailing customers about suspicious traffic coming from their home networks indicating one or more devices may have been compromised, maybe a good number of consumers would start to look for that certification when they buy. Which is important because, let's face it, if insecure products don't actually impact sales then a lot of companies aren't going to care at all. You can try to punish bad behavior after the fact, but only if their government cooperates and even then I think many times they'd just fold up shop under one name and open again under another. You really have to address it at the point of purchase to affect company behavior IMO.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#247

Post by virtuabhi »

idlewords wrote: post #215
dsr12 wrote: post #167

Wikileaks tweeted: "Mr. Assange is still alive and WikiLeaks is still publishing. We ask supporters to stop taking down the US internet. You proved your point. " Link: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/789574436219449345 If their claim is true, does anyone think, it will turn many sympathizers against them? I don't think attacking normal bushiness is a good thing to do.

I think this tweet says more about Assange's vanity than anything else. The motives of the attackers are much less interesting than the fact that such attacks are now possible.

"Assange's vanity than anything else" -> Don't get too ahead of yourself. Has there been any instance where Wikileaks had made a false claim?

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#248

Post by collinmanderson »

Chirael wrote: post #246

One of the Krebs articles mentioned an idea of a certification (similar to UL) which could be on products like DVRs and web cams. You can't ever certify something as completely secure of course, but the certification could indicate "firmware updatable", "no hard-coded default passwords" and "where there are passwords they are generated randomly and unique to each specific product" (not family of products). Maybe even…

"if ISPs stepped up and started emailing customers about suspicious traffic coming from their home networks indicating one or more devices may have been compromised" - I remember Comcast doing something like that back in 2008ish.

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#249

Post by golergka »

msie wrote: post #108
adamiscool8 wrote: post #49

It's fashionable to blame Russia these days, but what country manufactures the most IoT devices, and has the type of government that could mandate backdoor access?

It's been fashionable to blame China not so long ago.

This is true. Does this make the accusations less credible?

Re: Internet Attack Spreads, Disrupting Major Websites

#250

Post by losteverything »

cheepin wrote: post #196
losteverything wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you third grade down your comment please? I find your language to be of high interest like you had a "dUH" moment - which I am ignorant to get myself. The Sons rays meat

DDOS usually occurs via a botnet of infected networked devices. Thus, the attacker is getting their resources for "free" since their host is unknowingly wasting CPU and bandwidth during the attack, while the defender is paying for theirs.

Thanks

Is this analogy accurate?

I have one road to get home. It got blocked so I create 2 more roads.

I now have 3 Roads to get home. All 3 become blocked. So now I have to make another road.

More roads is redundancy and requires capital.

The roads become unblocked but I now must expect future road blocks.

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