Today's Brutal DDoS Attack Is the Beginning of a Bleak Future

Gizmodo ^ | October 21,2015 | William Turton

[Hojczyk]

This morning a ton of websites and services, including Spotify and Twitter, were unreachable because of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Dyn, a major DNS provider. Details of how the attack happened remain vague, but one thing seems certain. Our internet is frightfully fragile in the face of increasingly sophisticated hacks.

Some think the attack was a political conspiracy, like an attempt to take down the internet so that people wouldn’t be able to read the leaked Clinton emails on Wikileaks. Others think it’s the usual Russian assault. No matter who did it, we should expect incidents like this to get worse in the future. While DDoS attacks used to be a pretty weak threat, we’re entering a new era.

If hackers are more easily able to amass extensive DDoS botnets, that means the internet as we know it becomes more vulnerable. Attacking major internet infrastructure like Dyn has always been a possibility, but if it becomes easier than ever to launch huge DDoS attacks, that means we might be seeing some of our favorite sites have more downtime than usual. These attacks could extend to other major pieces of internet infrastructure, causing even more widespread outages.

This could be the beginning of a very bleak future. If hackers are able to take down the internet at will, what happens next? It’s unclear how long it could take for the folks at Dyn to fix this problem, or if they will ever be able to solve the problem of being hit with a huge DDoS attack. But this new breed of DDoS attacks is a scary problem no matter how you look at it.

[DannyTN]

"Our internet is frightfully fragile in the face of increasingly sophisticated hacks."

1. We need to fix that.
2. We need a counter espionage team trying to take down the internet, so we can find the weak points and fix them.
3. We need to be able to isolate America from foreign cyber attack in times of war.
4. We probably need to start some internet wars to provoke enemies into revealing our weakspots.
5. We need to be able to unplug certain countries for bad behavior.

   I know let's give control of the internet to a glo bal entity. We will all be safe then! /Super Sarcasm

[Helicondelta]

Biden declared cyberwar on Russia last week. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes. Obama may have ordered some type of attack and this may be the Russian retaliation. All because Hillary couldn’t manage her e-mails.

[VanDeKoik]

With the web now in the hands of incompetent nations, it’s pretty much done for.

[Snark]

It is amazing how sophisticated these hackers have gotten. There are MANY toP of the line safeguards to insure this doesn’t happen and yet, it is increasing. It is worrisome.
This time, they targeted primarily entertainment sites (Netflix, Reddit, Twitter, etc) but one has to ponder, what could the hackers ultimately do if they really tried? I believe these attacks were essentially a “test run” for something bigger.

[jsanders2001]

Nah I think it’s our government testing out the NWO information control slow system through the UN’s new system probably paid for by Satan - Soros’ Industries, Inc....

[Jim Robinson]

That glo bal thing will probably lead to a glowing (in the dark) conclusion.

[SaveFerris]

[ "Our internet is frightfully fragile in the face of increasingly sophisticated hacks." ]

OUR internet? The one Obama gave away to the United Nations? I expect more "outages" as we get closer to the election rigging for Hillary. Of course, Obama and Hillary will blame it on Russia - so they can have World War IV to cover for their wrecking of normal America.

This is the most important time in America right now.

[MNDude]

Twitter becomes interrupted, what a bleak future! \sarc

[glorgau]

Well, there are a couple of hundred million insecure Internet of Things devices out there (connected lightbulbs, security cameras, baby monitors, etc.) that are never going to be updated for security leaks and they can all be used as zombies in the service of nefarious actors.

I don’t despair that eventually AI is going to pick up the IP patterns of bad actors and screen them out.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Don't think it is the Russians or another foreign power. Why would they disrupt the political turmoil inside the US?

I think it is a domestic attack. By whom? Your guess is as good as mine. Hint: who has the most to gain between now and Nov 8?

[KosmicKitty]

Relying on something that no one seriously want to protect is insanity.

[funfan]

I think it was an inside job.

[Kenny]

This is BS from Obama. They've been setting up the hack meme for weeks to get their dirty cops, FBI & DOJ in charge of the election.

Also, heavily armed thugs at embassy to get Julian Assange:

PHOTO: Heavily armed 'police' appear outside Ecuadorian Embassy in London where Julian Assange has political asylum (photo, Tuesday morning) pic.twitter.com/EOfsrmi3t2— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 21, 2016

[gaijin]

Dem gameplan:

1. announce anti-Russian cyberwar
2. Internet, power, banking goes off couple days b4 election - perp is NSA, not Russia
3. Blame Russia like crazy, 24/7
4. Chaos ensues
5. Gummint announce, “election chaos owing to Dastardly Russians, must use FEMA to manage election from national level”
6. Hillary wins
7. “Finally the dastardly Russian hackers have been repelled..!”
8. Hillary takes control after a month of adjustment
9. Hillary sets about eliminating enemies, radio talk-show hosts + internet

[mewzilla]

If sites like PayPal and Amazon are affected, that could be major economic disruption.

[WENDLE]

But wait a minute! Do you recall..?
That just 5 days ago the dumbass of all time,obozo announce a cyber war. On Russia? You saw Biden interviewed on Charlie Rose smirking and cocking it up about attacking Russian Internet. Right? What the hell do you expect folks? Has the media such a short memory or are they not horrified that the sheeple might find out that Trump is so right.? Obama telegraphs everything. He has given away more state secrets than the Rosenbergs( executed for treason). This administration and Hillary are a nightmare of incompetence or maybe it is treason too.

[Orbiter]

DDoS attacks are easily insulated against. This most recent issue smacks of something “other” going on.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Probably the best defense to a DDOS attack would be a buffer that would pass individual pings but block repeated pings from the same system. Say a DDOS attacker has 100k computers all set to attack. The attack would start strong, but quickly fail as more and more of them were relegated to the queue because they had already pinged.

This turns the attack around against the zombie computers to the point where they are getting nowhere, but traffic at the defender site is normal.

[ez]

I think if Trump wins they will claim that she was ahead and that the Russians tampered with our elections. Zero will declare the election invalid and will claim to reschedule it but it will never be done over. The UN will move in and adios, America. They CANNOT afford to let Trump get in there and find out what they have done wrt supporting ISIS and backstabbing America.