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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

#91

Post by guelo »

Jtsummers wrote: post #75
cpncrunch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

That's fine, if you connect some cheap webcam and it causes you to be knocked off the internet you're going to be mad, leave a bad review for the camera, and not buy from them again. Market forces would then incentivize better security to be built into these devices.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#92

Post by Jtsummers »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #88
Jtsummers wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I think that's okay. We don't expect all homeowners to be, say, experts in electrical wiring, or gas supply, plumbing, drainage, or waste management. But all of these things—if they are poorly modified, managed, or maintained—can cause impacts on third parties. In the case of networked devices, the possible impact on third parties is even greater. We also enforce strong regulation on these systems – defining what may…

Then we need to regulate the installation and maintenance of home networks like we do plumbing and electric. This is not a small requirement, and given the current ubiquity of home networks and networked devices it will be an incredible challenge to implement.

Probably a startup idea or two would come out of that sort of regulation. Now that, to install that Nanny Cam, I have to hire a certified network administrator.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#93

Post by eridius »

gaur wrote: post #80
eridius wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're upset that the headline doesn't deliver info on what the headline tells you? That doesn't make any sense. And the bullets are providing context for the article, not trying to answer the headline.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#94

Post by chatmasta »

csdrane wrote: post #18
zzleeper wrote: post #9

To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the BackConnect kid decided to launch the DDoS: https://www.crunchbase.com/person/marshal-webb Edit: Maybe this helps with the downvotes: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/lulzsec-takes-revenge-on-alleged... https://www.reddit.com/r/cincinnati/comments/ibwbz/fbi_hacki...

This is totally inappropriate.

Except it's the exact accusation leveled by the linked article.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#95

Post by Jtsummers »

guelo wrote: post #91
Jtsummers wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

That's fine, if you connect some cheap webcam and it causes you to be knocked off the internet you're going to be mad, leave a bad review for the camera, and not buy from them again. Market forces would then incentivize better security to be built into these devices.

But the average consumer won't realize, especially when the installation and network failure aren't temporally adjacent, that the camera is the cause of the problem.

The solutions available (and there are more, just enumerating some):

IPv6 so everything is directly on the internet or not hidden behind a common router like they are now. This allows direct blocking of bad actors.

Security certifications for all software and hardware that ever connects to the internet. Well, guess I won't be doing as much programming at home anymore. And good luck getting that open source project of yours certified without getting some Patreon supporters with deep pockets.

Arbitrarily, from the consumers perspective, block their access to the internet when they "did nothing wrong".

Hold the creators of the devices accountable for making shitty, exploitable systems. Sue them directly for the financial harm they've permitted (millions of dollars today alone). But good luck suing them, they're in a foreign and will cease to exist tomorrow (under that corporate entity).

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#96

Post by zzleeper »

Jtsummers wrote: post #84
zzleeper wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't everyone else then block the customer? Get the big 5 tech companies to block IPs that are shown to do DDOS, for say a 24hr period, and you will see how quickly they unplug that IOT Toaster

Speaking as not-me, the average, non-technical homeowner who just installed his new internet connected washing machine at home. Great, now I can throw in a load and get a notice on my phone when it's done. This is awesome! (3 hours later) Wait, why can't I get to the internet? I call my ISP, they tell me that my connection is fine (it's tech support, they aren't security experts). But, I tell them, Google doesn't wor…

As you said, some sort of message would have to be the way. A 4xx probably won't cut it but something like the messages Google shows you when asking for a captcha is fine.

My point is that there will be a cost, and that taking action against vendors won't be enough (sp. if they are in a different country, are no longer in business, etc.)

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#97

Post by redleggedfrog »

supergeek133 wrote: post #72
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The real problem here, and this isn't going to be a popular position, is that you're relying on the internet for important things.

The original engineering and architecture of the the internet (and the web) was not intended to create something you put all your eggs in. It was for sharing information, not building your mission critical business operations on.

Right now, if you dumped your business into a cloud service you're mostly dead in the water. But those who have local infrastructure can keep working. As people have been noting here, centralization is bad.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#98

Post by profmonocle »

raverbashing wrote: post #44

Not only East Coast, Twitter can't be resolved in Ireland/UK right now (I assume the mobile app uses some kind of 'dns pinning' as that is working)

> (I assume the mobile app uses some kind of 'dns pinning' as that is working)

The app was down for me until I switched my WiFi network to use OpenDNS. It's possible your phone has the DNS record cached, or it's using a different DNS server. (Is it on cellular?)

Hardcoding IPs into a mobile app typically isn't done because it makes changing your infrastructure extremely painful.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#99

Post by RickS »

cmdrfred wrote: post #82
supergeek133 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly, I have tons of IOT devices. I put them on a separate subnet that does not have a gateway to the internet then I VPN into that network to access them. Perhaps a product that makes that a simple process will solve the problem?

FWIW, I would definitely be interested in paying for a service like this. I'm technical enough to care about this, but not technical enough to solve it myself. Similar to where I was before dropbox.

Re: Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown

#100

Post by losvedir »

trendia wrote: post #6

If you are unable to connect because of DNS problems, switch your DNS server to 8.8.8.8 (Google). Edit: sorry there, this worked for me but apparently it's not guaranteed.

I switched temporarily from those to Open DNS's 208.67.222.222 and things are working for now.

But, just to be clear, it's not Google's fault: 8.8.8.8 are not the authoritative name servers for the sites that are down. Rather, Dyn, the provider of the NS is down, and I presume Google (8.8.8.8) is correctly not returning any IP address because the underlying authoritative name server is not.

Presumably Open DNS is working because it's not abiding by the TTL it's supposed to? It's caching the underlying authoritative name server longer than it was told?

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