[10/21/16] Massive DDOS Attack Knocks Huge Websites Offline - The Russians, probably.

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Internet users around the world, but mostly in the US, reported that some top websites were not loading on Friday morning.

The affected sites included Amazon, Twitter, Etsy, Github, and Spotify.

The issue was mostly resolved at 9:20 a.m. ET, but at 12:07 p.m. ET, the issue started to crop up again, according to one of the companies at the center of the apparent cyber attack.

The issue appears to have something to do with DNS hosts — in particular, Dyn, one of the biggest DNS companies.

Domain Name Servers are a core part of the internet's backbone. They translate what you type into your browser —www.businessinsider.com, for example — into IP addresses that computers can understand.

Dyn said on Friday that it suffering a DDoS attack, or a distributed denial of service. That basically means hackers are overwhelming Dyn's servers with useless data and repeated load requests, preventing useful data — the Twitter IP address, for example — from getting through.

No group has taken credit for the DDoS attack yet. The Department of Homeland Security is monitoring the attack, Politico's Eric Geller reports.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/amaz...-and-etsy-down-in-apparent-dns-attack-2016-10

Who did it? Even posting this, Twitter is running like shit for me.
 
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There are people seriously speculating Russia. What would Putin get out of making Twitter slow and shutting down fucking Etsy and the Playstation Network?
Bonus stupidity:
Screenshot (2).png
 
Beaniebon said:
Twitter is still running like shit. Pics and stuff won't load.
Don't know about Reddit and all the other sites affected, though.

The Farms doesn't run on Dyn. At least, I don't think it does.
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That's not how it works. The root DNS servers that tell your computer how to translate URL'S (such as kiwifarms.net) into a format that machines can actually use are being overwhelmed. This has happened before, but they couldn't even manage to keep it down for a full day. I suspect that there is some sort of secret mitigation measure in place.
Also, the Chinese are more likely to be behind this than the Russians.
 
Splendid Meat Sticks said:
That's not how it works. The root DNS servers that tell your computer how to translate URL'S (such as kiwifarms.net) into a format that machines can actually use are being overwhelmed. This has happened before, but they couldn't even manage to keep it down for a full day. I suspect that there is some sort of secret mitigation measure in place.
Also, the Chinese are more likely to be behind this than the Russians.
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Apologies for my ignorance then. I just thought it blocked service.
 
Splendid Meat Sticks said:
That's not how it works. The root DNS servers that tell your computer how to translate URL'S (such as kiwifarms.net) into a format that machines can actually use are being overwhelmed. This has happened before, but they couldn't even manage to keep it down for a full day. I suspect that there is some sort of secret mitigation measure in place.
Also, the Chinese are more likely to be behind this than the Russians.
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DYN does not run any of the root DNS servers. You meant their company servers and the customers they service.

The Chinese are also abysmal programmers. The Russians actually aren't that bad.
 
I'm also really ignorant, but my coworker says they've been testing this kind of attack for awhile and this attack is also another test for something bigger? Anyone have insight?
Hasn't affected me yet but we had to stop taking paypal payments for awhile at work. Actually the it guys are kind of freaking out over something that just happened.
 
melty said:
I'm also really ignorant, but my coworker says they've been testing this kind of attack for awhile and this attack is also another test for something bigger? Anyone have insight?
Hasn't affected me yet but we had to stop taking paypal payments for awhile at work. Actually the it guys are kind of freaking out over something that just happened.
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Insight on how the internet works? You can start here with the RFC's.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc.html

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1035.txt
 
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Piss Clam said:
The Chinese are also abysmal programmers. The Russians actually aren't that bad.
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The Chinese are derivative ripoff artists. The Russians could probably shut down the entire Internet for a week or two with nothing but an iPhone with a broken screen and a bottle of vodka.
 
AnOminous said:
The Chinese are derivative ripoff artists. The Russians could probably shut down the entire Internet for a week or two with nothing but an iPhone with a broken screen and a bottle of vodka.
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Yeah, I don't get if it was Russia why it was (comparatively) so small scale? Oh no, Twitter, Buisness Insider, and Paypal are down?
 
AnOminous said:
Could be a dry run for something bigger.
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Hell of a dry run. There's no way DNS companies won't massively step up their security and server capabilities after this.

Beaniebon said:
There are people seriously speculating Russia. What would Putin get out of making Twitter slow and shutting down fucking Etsy and the Playstation Network?
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Who stands to gain from this at all?
 
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