Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Another Day, Another DDoS Blitz for Twitter
TechNewsWorld ^ | 08/13/09 4:00 AM PT | By Richard Adhikari

Posted on 08/13/2009 4:53:03 AM PDT by justa-hairyape

Last week, Twitter was vexed by a DDoS attack that took it offline for a few hours. In that case, Russian hackers were suspected. This week's DDoS attack, however, may have different origins -- and they could be related to the attacks that took out a few U.S. and South Korean government sites last Fourth of July, according to AVG's chief of research.

The latest attack hit the site in waves.

"We're currently experiencing another wave of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against our system," Alex Payne, platform lead at Twitter, wrote on the service's Web dev blog on Tuesday at 12:23 p.m.

Last week's DDoS attacks were suspected to be the work of Russian hackers, who apparently undertook the attack to silence a single Georgian blogger. The blogger goes by the name "Cyxymu" and was posting articles about the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Georgia.

However, this latest DDoS attack is more likely related to the attacks last month on U.S. and South Korean government Web sites, AVG's Thompson said. Over the July 4 weekend, massive DDoS attacks hit at least 14 U.S. government Web sites, including that of the Department of Homeland Security More about Department of Homeland Security, as well as several South Korean government sites.

Cybercriminals are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it's getting more and more difficult to trace the botnet operators.

In light of the repeated attacks against its infrastructure, Twitter needs to take action to improve security. "They could distribute their infrastructure better and use an approach like Akamai to further reduce risk," Miller told TechNewsWorld.

Akamai provides a distributed computing platform for global Internet content and application delivery.

(Excerpt) Read more at technewsworld.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ddos; hackers; internet; twitter
Timely article about the recent DDOS attacks. I am not a twitter and posted this because we have ongoing DDOS attacks that appear to be changing in structure and origin.
1 posted on 08/13/2009 4:53:03 AM PDT by justa-hairyape
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape

>>> because we have ongoing DDOS attacks <<<<<

For clarification, who do you man by “we”?

Has anyone posted anything about the FR outages over the last few days?


2 posted on 08/13/2009 4:55:08 AM PDT by angkor (The U.S. Congress is at war with America.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape

Time for a counter attack, if possible.


3 posted on 08/13/2009 4:55:20 AM PDT by wolfcreek (KMTEXASA!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape; ShadowAce

‘Owned’ Windows machines will be the end of us...


4 posted on 08/13/2009 4:57:16 AM PDT by KoRn (Department of Homeland Security, Certified - "Right Wing Extremist")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: angkor
I meant we as in the Global Internet community, but there was a posting on the Freerepublic Yahoo group that did mention a DDOS attack on Tuesday against FR. I missed that one. Early Wednesday morning they appeared to be some similar problems.
5 posted on 08/13/2009 4:59:59 AM PDT by justa-hairyape
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape

OK, thanks.

I was having FR problems right up to yesterday afternoon and evening.


6 posted on 08/13/2009 5:08:51 AM PDT by angkor (The U.S. Congress is at war with America.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape
There was also a new Man in the Middle hack routine talked about at DefCon in Vegas where the SSL was hacked and not secure. Supposedly the industry and hackers got together and fixed the problem. I saw what may have been a man in the middle attack on my Paypal SSL screen about 2 weeks ago. They had inserted text on the screen on paypal that appears after you login. Was asking for my ATM card and pin number. Luckily the hacker was not very good with English. Spotted some grammar mistakes, otherwise there was no way to tell it was not paypal asking for the info. Here is an article about the basic hack.

SSL flaw fixing shows industry can work together

7 posted on 08/13/2009 5:12:45 AM PDT by justa-hairyape
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: wolfcreek
Time for a counter attack, if possible.

If this latest attack is similar in structure and origin to the attack on South Korea last July 4th weekend, apparently they had also attacked the South Korean banking system.

Here is another related article along with an excerpt.

Internet security is everyone's business

Excerpt follows

Another noteworthy one, says V3, was the revelation that the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) security could now be subverted using a process known as a "man in the middle" attack. The scary thing about it is that SSL is what persuades millions of Internet users to hand over their credit card details and engage in e-commerce on the browser interface.

8 posted on 08/13/2009 5:22:09 AM PDT by justa-hairyape
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape
Here is a technical page on the DNS DDoS Amplification attacks.

Anatomy of a DNS DDoS Amplification Attack

9 posted on 08/13/2009 5:25:51 AM PDT by justa-hairyape
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape; rdb3; Calvinist_Dark_Lord; GodGunsandGuts; CyberCowboy777; Salo; Bobsat; JosephW; ..

10 posted on 08/13/2009 5:36:00 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape
OMG Nooooooooooooo! Not Twitter.
I don't know what I'd do if I couldn't access my Twiiter account.

Except to do something important, like rearranging my sock drawer.

11 posted on 08/13/2009 5:42:37 AM PDT by Condor51 (The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Condor51

Those ‘so and so wants to follow you on Twitter’ emails are a real hoot.


12 posted on 08/13/2009 5:48:32 AM PDT by justa-hairyape
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: justa-hairyape
*** Those ‘so and so wants to follow you on Twitter’ emails are a real hoot. ***

They sure are.
I had three 'followers' at first, then I checked them out and they were all Porn Sites lol! Now I have one, a FReeper (I think).

I just joined because JimRob did. Hoped to get up to date news on FR Crashes, and/or to send him a 'tweet' on the same. So for I'm just screwing around with it. I don't see what all the hub-bub is.

Its kinda lame.

13 posted on 08/13/2009 6:13:43 AM PDT by Condor51 (The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: Condor51
Speaking of porn sites, on 2 or 3 threads I mentioned that an application I had on a virtual dedicated server in Slovakia was hack attacked and shutdown. I guess I should clarify to anyone that had read those posts that it was not a porn site that got shutdown. Those Eastern European woman however are something else.

Oh I am sure a lot of us will get dragged onto Twitter, but really who has the time. Gonna crash and forget all about hacking for awhile. Will check the thread later.

14 posted on 08/13/2009 6:22:44 AM PDT by justa-hairyape
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: KoRn
‘Owned’ Windows machines will be the end of us...

It ought to be illegal to use a windows machine to connect to the internet.

15 posted on 08/13/2009 7:14:15 AM PDT by zeugma (Will it be nukes or aliens? Time will tell.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson