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Massive cyber attack takes down popular websites and social media


Fragile Bird

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Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Airbnb, Paypal, SoundClound, parts of Amazon's cloud services, were hit by massive cyber attacks this morning and apparently are undergoing a second round of attacks as I write this post.

WikiLeaks is apparently claiming their supporters are doing this in retaliation for Assange's access to the internet being suspended. ETA They released a statement telling their 'supporters' they can stop now, because they've made their point.  If it is the Russians, I am very amused at the idea the folks at WikiLeaks thought they could control the Russian bear once they slept with it.  :P 

US Homeland Security is investigating and media reports are saying they suspect a state agency or state supported hackers are behind the attacks.

So....since Assange has been releasing stolen material to discredit Clinton's campaign and US authorities say those materials were stolen by Russian based groups, is this yet another sign of  dire things to come out of Russia if Clinton wins?  Or what do you think this is all about?

ps - I was having problems with Westeros this morning, were we attacked as well?

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Krebbs really pissed off some people. This one comes right after one of the Dyn researchers collaborated with him on a presentation at NANOG. Krebbs' write up on that link provides some pretty interesting background. The most interesting part I think is how these botnets are growing due to the increased prevalence of internet connected devices - security cameras, home appliances, etc. These things are helping to power the growth of DDoS attacks. 

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1 minute ago, Daniel Plainview said:

Ah man, just lovely people supporting that scum Assange and WikiLeaks eh? 

Not sure this has anything to do with Assange and Wikileaks. They could be involved but this seems more about probing the infrastructure for monetary gain and possibly just to prove it can be taken down.  

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1 minute ago, Altherion said:

What would taking down social media on November 8th accomplish? People don't use it to vote. It's much more likely that this is either retaliation or a probe.

Making it impossible for news agencies to report to most people what election results are? That's the obvious one.

The secondary one would be to use it as a way to allow attacks on other things while the big attack is going on. If you were wanting to hack election officials computers during that time it would be not as hard to do. 

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1 hour ago, Nasty Fragile Bird said:

Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, Airbnb, Paypal, SoundClound, parts of Amazon's cloud services, were hit by massive cyber attacks this morning and apparently are undergoing a second round of attacks as I write this post.

WikiLeaks is apparently claiming their supporters are doing this in retaliation for Assange's access to the internet being suspended. ETA They released a statement telling their 'supporters' they can stop now, because they've made their point.  If it is the Russians, I am very amused at the idea the folks at WikiLeaks thought they could control the Russian bear once they slept with it.  :P 

US Homeland Security is investigating and media reports are saying they suspect a state agency or state supported hackers are behind the attacks.

So....since Assange has been releasing stolen material to discredit Clinton's campaign and US authorities say those materials were stolen by Russian based groups, is this yet another sign of  dire things to come out of Russia if Clinton wins?  Or what do you think this is all about?

ps - I was having problems with Westeros this morning, were we attacked as well?

I was wondering all the same things today, especially when the second round of attacks came round.  Also wondered if I was auditioning for tin foil headgear, but nevertheless the speculations continued.

What seems different for the second round is that in addition to so many of the sites attacked being located here on the east coast, evidently the UK too -- access to the UK Guardian was denied most of the afternoon too.

If it is the russkies etc., can't see that having the Orange Stalin 'running' things here will make anything better than having Hillary actually thinking and doing and getting people to figure out protections etc.

However, what was that remark Kerry made about russkie hacks of the DNC etc., that 'they'll know when we act on this?" or some words like that. Can't recall the exact ones now.  That was last week -- so long ago!

 

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6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Making it impossible for news agencies to report to most people what election results are? That's the obvious one.

The secondary one would be to use it as a way to allow attacks on other things while the big attack is going on. If you were wanting to hack election officials computers during that time it would be not as hard to do. 

I would guess that most people still own television sets so reporting the election results should not be significantly affected unless the attackers can also disrupt broadcasting and/or communication within the media corporations. Using this as a distraction is viable, but hacking into specific machines is a lot more difficult than a DDoS attack and, in the case of election officials' machines, the teams responsible for looking into the two types of incident probably don't have much overlap.

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Ha!  Someone who has been off in the editing room all day just heard about the Denial Of Service attacks and texted me with, "So can anyone take the Republican party and / or Trump to court for letting the Russians into our political and internet systems?  Our country was ATTACKED today!"

Deny people their tv and hell shall break loose! :D

ETA this: 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/21/moscow-to-retaliate-against-bbc-after-natwest-closed-russia-today-account

Quote

 

Russian diplomatic sources in the UK claimed the attack on RT was part of an attempt to squeeze Russian thinking out of Britain, and said that the action against RT was prompted by the bank, and its owner – a reference to the UK government.

The sources said that four other Russian news agencies have had their accounts closed in London and been prevented from finding other sources of financial support.

Russia’s ambassador Alexander Yakovenko said the closure of RT’s accounts would challenge the UK’s image as an upholder of the freedom of expression.

“This is a problem of free speech in this country. The clear conclusion is that the Russian alternative point of view is not welcome here. Their aim is to make the work of this channel impossible in this country,” he said. 

Asking if there would be any reciprocal measure, the ambassador quoted Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, saying: “Never do to others what you don’t want them to do to you.”

The closure of RT’s accounts would challenge the UK’s image as an upholder of free speech, the sources said.

In a previous statement, the Russian embassy in London said: “This openly political decision follows many similar acts of harassment and intimidation against Russian news outlets in UK (others affected include Rossiya Segodnya).

“Russia Today itself has been subjected to a plethora of unsubstantiated Ofcom investigations. This policy amounts to squeezing alternative voices out of UK media space.”

In Moscow, three pro-Kremlin senators in the upper house of parliament have already urged Russian authorities to hit back by closing the BBC’s bank accounts in Russia, the RIA news agency reported on Monday.

 

 

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