DDoS

Though it's in hot water with the U.S. government, WikiLeaks is being supported by online activists fighting to keep the site alive.

WikiLeaks is being propped up by a barrage of mirror sites created by activists following moves by Amazon to stop hosting its site and Domain Name System provider EveryDNS.net to cut off its DNS services, according to The New York Times. Such mirrors can replicate an entire Web site, ensuring that all content and documents remain online and accessible even if WikiLeaks' own site is taken down.

But some of WikiLeaks supporters are adopting a … Read more

South Korea has installed digital "bunkers" to prevent a repeat of the massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that crippled parts of the country last year.

The nation was floored after huge streams of junk Internet data poured across its networks last year, targeting the infrastructure of government and businesses. "We were caught off-guard," Jinhyun Cho of the Korea Computer Emergency Response Team (KrCERT) told ZDNet Australia. "The whole country knows what a DDoS attack is."

A "bunker" in this case is a new IP address served to a business that is under … Read more

The FBI has launched an investigation into an online protest that allegedly took down numerous Web sites belonging to antipiracy and entertainment groups, as well as the U.S. Copyright Office, a source with knowledge of the probe told CNET today.

Over the past two months, a group calling itself "Anonymous," with links to the 4chan Web forum and image board, has launched distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) against Web sites operated by the Motion Picture Association of America, The Recording Industry Association (RIAA), Hustler magazine, rocker Gene Simmons, The British Phonographic Industry, and other similar groups in France, … Read more

If you've ever allowed yourself to be subjected to Kiss songs, you'll know that they are jolly, somewhat empty-headed, and entirely innocent.

If you've ever allowed yourself to be subjected to a reality show called "Gene Simmons' Family Jewels," you'll know that the Kiss frontman is a man with a lovely family, experience of plastic surgery, and opinions that suggest a slight smattering of oldy-worldy self-righteousness.

How entirely stunning, then, that this wealthy aging, platform-booted man seems to have encountered a little difficulty with those who are able to put the digital boot in … Read more

Denial of service attacks launched by the group Anonymous took down the Web sites of U.K. record label Ministry of Sound and its legal firm Gallant Macmillian on Sunday.

The Anonymous group targeted the two sites as part of its battle against organizations that it believes are using strong-arm tactics to deal with those who share files on the Internet. The Ministry of Sound specifically hired Gallant Macmillian to identify and sue individuals who allegedly uploaded songs from its music catalog, according to The Register. Macmillian has reportedly sent out letters to those suspected of illegal file sharing.

As … Read more

Members of image board and Internet forum 4chan over the weekend launched a series of DDoS attacks against Web sites for the two biggest media trade groups.

Accused in the past of drumming up raids against Twitter, YouTube, and other popular sites, users at 4chan urged fellow members to carry out DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks against the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) late last week, taking both offline on Saturday.

The actions by 4chan users were launched in retaliation against similar DDoS attacks aimed at The Pirate Bay and other file-sharing … Read more

On Thursday, Twitter was taken down by a denial-of-service attack, while Facebook suffered related problems. And other social/media sites like Gawker and Live Journal were hampered by attacks as well. These attacks illustrate just how crucial network security is in a world where organized cyberattacks can bring down even the most prominent sites.

While the news cycle is quickly headed to the point of diminishing returns (lots of ruminations on DDoS, where the attacks originated, and how it was done), I've yet to see posts on how such attacks can be prevented.

In light of Twitter's susceptibility, … Read more

Hosting company GoGrid suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack Monday afternoon that affected approximately half of its thousands of customers, co-founder David Hecht said on Tuesday.

The DDoS attack hit Monday afternoon, slowing customers' Web sites, creating latency issues, and making clients' Web sites inaccessible, Hecht said.

Although GoGrid was able to stabilize the situation by late Monday afternoon, getting most of its customers' sites back online, the company faced a decision whether to stay on course with a scheduled maintenance later that night or reschedule for another date.

The maintenance, which required GoGrid to take its portal down and troubleshoot … Read more

Internet service providers now spend most of their IT security resources detecting and mitigating distributed denial-of-service attacks, concludes a report from Arbor Networks.

The fourth edition of the Worldwide Infrastructure Security Report, released Tuesday, was based on how 70 lead security engineers responded to 90 questions. As in the previous three reports, ISPs reported attacks where their networks were overloaded with packets, what's called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. However, this year, the ISPs indicated the attacks were not only larger in size but that most of them were stretching the upper limits of their security resources in order … Read more