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Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

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Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#71

Post by cpncrunch »

Jtsummers wrote: post #45
gaius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the "machine" in question is my ADSL router as supplied by my ISP, I will be deeply unimpressed if they block me due to their own negligence in updating it!

Similarly, a single bad device on my network would block the whole of my network from the internet. It's another sort of denial of service attack. We need IPv6 and have devices either access the internet with their own IP address or not access it at all. This solution, then, would only impact bad actor devices, not your other (non-compromised) devices. Still, not easy.

I think it's fair to block the entire network. It is then up to the network administrator to fix the problematic device.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#72

Post by supergeek133 »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #56
jerf wrote: post #4

For a long time, I've wondered what would finally be the Securitypocalypse, the thing that finally caused our industry as a whole to take security seriously. These IoT DDoS attacks are as good a candidate as any I've seen in a long time. They are fundamentally very difficult to fix in light of the non-updateability of many of these devices, and this is only the beginning, because the IoT has hardly begun to develop.…

These attacks are mostly possible because of the complacency of operators at many sites and companies. This is not a new problem and many of RFC's talk about methods for preventing and mitigating them, but most people don't care and prefer to just outsource everything to a single provider, which becomes the weakest link. The Internet wasn't envisioned with a single email provider, single DNS provider, single app cont…

The problem with these devices in particular is the weak point is the user. As is the case in most attacks.

Your average user says "Sure I can setup cameras" then sees "remote access" in the menu, sets it up, maybe it has some UPNP to the router and BOOM. Magic remote login without any type of mitigation.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#73

Post by apetresc »

thechowchowman wrote: post #22
csdrane wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is totally inappropriate.

Why inappropriate?

Probably because it's accusing some random person of a crime that there is literally no reason to suspect they are responsible for.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#74

Post by galdosdi »

nastyasiwannabe wrote: post #58

I'm suggesting this just so someone more knowledgeable can debunk it. Suppose FBI or someone up there had a meeting and said "in three weeks, there could be millions of armed Americans who believe that democracy was just stolen from them by some evil dictator in a massive globalist conspiracy. These people love twitter. Is there a way to make twitter go down without making it look like we're suddenly pulling the plug…

I'll bite.

It would take a lot longer than a couple of hours of twitter being down for that to have a useful effect. For something as major as the presidential election result, it would probably take minimum a week before people got bored and moved on to a different topic.

So this kind of attack that only takes something out for a few hours would have no useful effect for an actor that wants to prevent people from discussing a recent event.

IMHO, it would be hard in general to take out a service run by a serious IT organization (of which there are admittedly few, by my definition of serious) for more than a few days unless the attacker carried out non-trivial physical damage (eg, bombing multiple datacenters, murdering multiple system administrators, etc) or managed to somehow destroy enough backups (which in a serious IT shop, should be hard, as there should be some offline cold backups that require physical human activity to destroy)

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#75

Post by Jtsummers »

cpncrunch wrote: post #71
Jtsummers wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, a single bad device on my network would block the whole of my network from the internet. It's another sort of denial of service attack. We need IPv6 and have devices either access the internet with their own IP address or not access it at all. This solution, then, would only impact bad actor devices, not your other (non-compromised) devices. Still, not easy.

I think it's fair to block the entire network. It is then up to the network administrator to fix the problematic device.

While technically accurate to describe them as such, the vast majority of consumers (and internet service subscribers) lack the actual technical expertise to be network administrators.

Where these devices are being attacked inside, ostensibly, professional organizations (companies, schools, government buildings), I agree. But there you have, again ostensibly, an actual network administrator capable of dealing with the issue (and paid to do so).

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#76

Post by zzleeper »

rev_bird wrote: post #47
NKCSS wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to fix; back in the day when a machine was infected; an ISP would just block outgoing traffic, contact line owner and re-enable when the issue is resolved.

"Fix" is a relative term, especially if IoT devices are in play – yes, turning off the internet to customers stops the attack, but then (at least?) thousands of people lose internet connectivity because of a vulnerability that they could very well be powerless to fix. I'm not saying it's ok with me that an army of smart refrigerators could be taking out big chunks of the web, but it's a lot easier to tell someone, "H…

Not powerless, just unplug their toaster and they get their internet back.

What is powerless is that many people today couldn't get twitter, github, reddit, spotify, box, etc. because many people don't care about securing their webcam.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#77

Post by ComodoHacker »

dates wrote: post #38
gorbachev wrote: post #33

Here's a better article from Mr. Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/ddos-on-dyn-impacts-twit... Personally I think his case is pretty convincing.

krebs is loading reaaaaal slow for me...i wonder if its related? or just a lot of people linking to it today.

502 already. Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...

And the article about BackConnect mentioned by Bloomberg: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#78

Post by pc2g4d »

I always thought DNS had enough redundancy built-in that this sort of thing wouldn't really have much effect. But here I am unable to access websites, simply because name resolution isn't working. If my local DNS server were caching things longer there would largely be no issue.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#79

Post by zzleeper »

jplasmeier wrote: post #36
zzleeper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very young person so possibly impulsive; started college at age 12 so might not have developed enough emotional intelligence to avoid doing these things. I mean, Bloomberg is pointing fingers, I'm just trying to understand why an anti-DDoS firm would be DDoSing other firms.. EDIT: Also, "Marshal Webb, 18, whose Hamilton, Ohio home was raided this week by FBI agents as part of the LulzSec investigation". Maybe he did…

Per his LinkedIn[0] he started college at age 16. He's 23 now. The fact that he started college 2 years early, seven years ago, made him decide to DDoS a huge DNS provider? That's quite a leap... [0] - https://www.linkedin.com/in/webbmt

Also either his crunchbase or his linkedin are lying, because

"After starting college at the age of 12, I..." (from his crunchbase linked above)

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#80

Post by gaur »

eridius wrote: post #63
gaur wrote: post #21

Clickbait headline, followed by a two-bullet "summary" that does not actually deliver what the headline promises. Fuck this.

What are you taking about? There's a whole article there, not just 2 bullet points.

Neither the headline nor the bullet point "summary" actually delivers the promised information about a possible vendetta. The goal is obviously to bury the information as deep as possible in the article to increase the likelihood that readers will click on ads.
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