Access to Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, many others hit by DDoS attack on net traffic monitoring firm
25 Oct 2016
A massive online attack on New Hamphsire-based Dyn that monitors and routes internet traffic was finally repulsed after eleven hours on Friday.
The company under assault had finally restored its service after the attack that began at 7:10 am ET Friday morning. The assault prevented users on the US east coast from accessing Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Tumblr, Reddit, PayPal and other sites.
At 6:17 pm ET Friday, Dyn updated its website and announced that the distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack had been resolved and the service restored.
In DDoS attacks, hackers flood servers with so many fake requests for access that the servers cannot distinguish the real ones and crashing under the barrage.
The identity of the hackers behind the attack has not been determined.
''It's a very smart attack. We start to mitigate, they react. It keeps on happening every time. We're learning though,'' said Kyle York, Dyn's chief strategy officer said on a conference call with reporters Friday afternoon.
Experts say the worrying aspect of the attack was that the hackers used Mirai, an easy-to-use program that allowed even unskilled hackers to take over online devices and use them to launch DDoS attacks.
They add the attack appeared to have relied on hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices like cameras, baby monitors and home routers that had been infected without their owners' knowledge. The software with which hackers infected the devices, allowed them to them to flood a target with massive amounts of traffic.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security are investigating the incident and all potential causes, including criminal activity and a nation-state attack.
