If you were at work last Friday, you might have noticed that you couldn’t get on Twitter, Spotify, [Amazon, Tumblr, Reddit, Netflix…]. The sites themselves were fine, but users across the country lost access due to a large-scale attack on Dyn, a company whose servers provide infrastructure and routing services for the internet’s top destinations.

{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }

Allison Nixon, director of research at Flashpoint, said the botnet used in today’s ongoing attack is built on the backs of hacked IoT devices — mainly compromised digital video recorders (DVRs) and IP cameras made by a Chinese hi-tech company called XiongMai Technologies. The components that XiongMai makes are sold downstream to vendors who then use it in their own products.

“It’s remarkable that virtually an entire company’s product line has just been turned into a botnet that is now attacking the United States,” Nixon said.

{ Brian Krebs | Continue reading }

related { Chinese Firm Behind Friday’s Internet Outage Threatens Western Accusers With Lawsuits }

related { Last month the Exploratorium was the target of a cyberattack. This is an account of what we think happened and how we dealt with it. }

technology | October 24th, 2016