High Amounts of DDoS Attacks in 2013

The year of 2013 saw high amounts of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Beginning in March, finance, banking, and insurance companies were the focus of an assault that lasted for 14.6 days. Through the year, the attacks ranged from 20.6 hours to 5.4 hours at the end of the year.

The finance, banking, and insurance industries faced the brunt of these attacks towards the beginning of the year, whereas media and entertainment saw these types of attacks around the end of the year. The majority of attack vectors were User Datagram Protocol (UDP), SYN and Domain Name System (DNS).

The floods and the peak bandwidth ranged between 111gbps and 179gpbs. Some saw a peak attack of 144 million packets-per-second. These attacks focused on major corporations in the fields of finance, marketing, or politics, as well as various social media platforms and hubs. DDos attacks target massive online shops or host sites for independent sellers. It is a detriment to business and creates a lot of stress for those who fall prey to these forms of attacks.

Created by the marketing team at Prolexic Technologies.

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The Most Audacious Hacks in Computer History

When we think of warfare, most people will speak of the horror. Guns, tanks, bombs and explosions. Death and destruction everywhere. This is what war brings to people and to places.

However, there’s another form of warfare that is becoming increasingly prevalent and it can often be just as destructive as traditional war; cyber warfare.

Yes, computers are not only a powerful tool, but used by experts can be a powerful weapon too. The recent troubles with the Ukraine and Russia have highlighted cyber-attacks on Ukrainian computer networks. The sophisticated nature of the ‘Uroburos’ cyberweapon has led experts to believe it was designed to hack government and telecoms networks. Is it a coincidence that this weapon originated from Russia? Who can say, but it is not alone in being a way to disrupt people, businesses and countries as a malicious action.

Here are other examples of computer hacking which are noteworthy for their sheer audaciousness.

US Nearly Explodes Siberia. All of it.
The year is 1982. It is the height of the Cold War between the USA and Russia. The CIA and their Soviet equivalent, the KGB, were constantly trying to outdo each other. In one of the first examples of a Trojan Virus, the CIA added it to software the Russians stole and then used to monitor and regulate Russian gas pipelines. The software would lie in wait until the program finished running a specific number of commands (in this case, 10 million cycles).

After 10 million, it would change the program slightly. This occurred after several months, and then things got serious. The code instructed the software to run a pressure test at higher than normal levels. However, the CIA did not take into account that Russian engineering might not be equipped to handle it. The result was a pipeline explosion in Siberia that was so big it was 20% the strength of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

The Best Spy in the Business Wasn’t a Person
Traditionally, secret agents and spies were men and women who put their lives on the line for their government. It didn’t take long for someone to figure out a computer could probably do the same job.
Enter Flame. 20 megabytes of code that was programmed to spy on several countries in the Middle East. Flame had the ability to do the following:

• Copy files
• Capture screenshots
• Download instant messaging logs
• Turn on computer microphones and cameras remotely

Basically, it acted like James Bond in many ways. In fact, it was also programmed to project a specific cryptographic sequence known as a ‘prefix collision attack’ in case of detection. This means that is basically disguised itself (like any good spy) by convincing antivirus software that it was supposed to be there.

The amazing thing is that if it did get detected, it would delete itself and all traces from a system. It managed to operate for five years until eventually discovered in Iran. They claimed that the US was responsible for the virus. The US has denied all knowledge so we may never know the truth.

This post was written by Jake Messer on behalf of HANDD, a company specialising in data loss prevention services, file encryption and managed file transfer.

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The History of Hacking Culture

Hacking culture is changing and developing all the time. The modern world is full of flaws to discover and secret places to explore. It makes sense that people are fascinated with the subject, but how has it progressed over time?

In 1975 the “Robin Hood and Friar Tuck” programs were installed on Xerox machines by Motorola staff which meant every time the program was deleted, it would re-appear after the computer rebooted.  This virus was the first of its kind and paved the way for a long line of internet virus hacks that we see today.
As for today, hacking culture has matured and more recently the ‘free online school’ hack believed that ‘information wants to be free’ and so this saw a rise in code literacy and naturally made people even more aware of computer security, which can only be beneficial.

What will happen in the future? Will the elite hackers go underground and start working for the government? Who knows! Either way it’s clear that hacking will always have security perks. If there weren’t people to uncover pitfalls, we wouldn’t be making online security tighter.

By James Duval, business and technology editor at GKBCInc.

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What to Look for in Your Next DDoS Mitigation Provider

DDoS attacks are serious and could be detrimental to your brand and products. You need a DDoS mitigation provider that you can trust to protect your product and image. If you are looking for a new provider, a few key components go into an excellent one.

Being able to access the provider’s portal from anywhere -- including on a mobile device -- is important. Also, you want a provider with the best security protocols in place. A good provider also offers you rich DDoS forensics so that you have accurate insight into DDoS activity from around the world -- helping you stay informed and proactive.

Deep network visibility is also important, so if you’re not receiving mitigation effort data that is up to the minute, you might want to look for a different provider. By hiring the right provider, the first time around your brand and reputation can be secured

Created by the marketing team at Prolexic Technologies.

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Five Reasons Security Is A Necessity When Purchasing A New Mobile Device

You need security for your smartphone.
Are you thinking of buying yourself a new mobile phone this Christmas season? If so, you should know that you will need to have security installed on it as soon as you buy it, otherwise you will almost certainly find yourself faced with more trouble than you know how to handle farther down the road. Five reasons to get security are outlined in the sections below.

1) Smartphones are vulnerable too.
Users are only beginning to realize this fact, but smartphones are as vulnerable to malware, viruses, Trojan horses and other threats that come from online, being as they are, in essence, devices that have all the capabilities of a computer, though on the scale of a cellphone. This may be a tough fact to accept, but it is one which cellphone owners are going to have to realize and acknowledge if they are to do something to avoid becoming the next victims of the latest online threats.

2) They can be the prime targets of online threats.
What is more, the creators of many of these destructive programs are now targeting smartphones specifically. This fact is becoming more and more true as more and more people turn to smartphones rather than PCs as their primary method of surfing the Web (indeed, some experts are predicting that by 2020 there will be more smartphone than PC surfers!). One consequence of this trend is that hundreds of apps are created each day for all kinds of purposes, from shopping to checking the weather to losing weight, and this area is fertile ground for unscrupulous programmers who want to hack into somebody’s account. Many apps are really a cover for security threats. This also means that you should have the phone any new apps that may look attractive to you before you decide to download them.

3) Why does my mobile phone bill say I owe $6,734?
Sometimes the goal of hackers who take control of other people’s smartphones is to get a “free ride” by racking up call after call on them and leaving the owners on the hook for the expenses that they incur. Even if you know that you did not make all those calls, it may be extremely difficult to track down the offender and get back all the money that he or she stole from you. If no other danger should motivate you to protect your new mobile phone from attacks this one certainly should.

4) “Coffee shop attacks”
The public wifi connections that you find in hotels, airports and other public places are inherently non-secure. As a result, they are a common place for hackers to go looking for unsuspecting victims whose passwords and other sensitive data they can easily steal. It is up to you to make sure that your smartphone has adequate security software to protect it. Better yet, you should steer clear of this places and hook up your cellphone only in private, secure locations.

5) It is best to take care of the security problem while the device is new.
Mobile security is a problem that is easiest to solve if you undertake the task before you do anything else with the device. The most common threats to mobile phones come from downloading email attachments, apps and whole websites. If the first thing that you do with your new smartphone is to take care of security matters, you will be acting proactively, before any threats have even occurred - which is, after all, the best path of all. The adages “Better safe than sorry” and “A stitch in time saves nine” apply to mobile phone security just as much as it does to life in general. The best security software can intercept destructive malware before they even have time to “take residence” on the device. They can also be updated to provide protection against newer and newer threats. There are many other things they can do too, like use GPS to locate a lost or stolen mobile phone and even cause it to “lock up” if an unauthorized person gets hold of it.

Sarah Hendricks who is a security expert on protecting users and businesses from hackers and data leakage with NQ.com. NQ Mobile security provides all kinds of mobile security; users in the office, at home, or working remotely are all subject to attack, click here to learn where to find mobile security applications.

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From Freedom to Walled Gardens - The Evolution of The Internet

The Internet has given people from all over the world unprecedented ability to communicate with each other. Anyone can create content and share their thoughts and opinions with the world. The Internet is not controlled by any one central body, and this is something that many governments are uncomfortable with. Ideas posted online may be stored on a server thousands of miles from the place where the content creator lives, and can be copied, shared and archived by an unlimited number of users.

As this infographic shows, some governments, including those in mainland China, North Korea and the UAE have taken measures to restrict the kind of content that users can access online. Those countries restrict content that is political or religious in nature. Other countries, including several in Europe, have started to filter content too, blocking websites that contain illegal content such as child pornography or copyright file sharing sites.

The original creators of the Internet wanted information to be free, and love the widespread sharing of ideas, no matter whether they agree with those ideas or not. Freedom of communication is under threat, and the threat may be closer to home than you think.

Infographic provided by CWCS

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