Massive cyberattack threatens internet speed

Massive cyberattack threatens internet speed

www.cbc.ca

A battle between an anti-spam organization and a Dutch web-hosting company has led to a massive cyberattack that threatens to slow down the entire internet.

The Geneva-based non-profit group Spamhaus says it's being hit with a massive cyberattack, apparently from groups angry at being on its blacklist.

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.independent.co.uk
www.bbc.co.uk
www.internettrafficreport.com

They are saying this is the biggest cyber attack in history. I guess that remains to be seen. I haven't noticed any issues on my end... yet. Anyone else having speed related issues today?

The InternetTrafficReport.com site shows traffic to be normal. Will have to monitor it throughout the day to see if anything changes.

www.cbc.ca
(visit the link for the full news article)

Anyone else having speed related issues today?

I was just reading that on drudge and no have not experienced any slow downs neither like spammers or DDOS attackers.

Think they all need to start doing something more productive than waste peoples time.

From BBC article:

It is having an impact on popular services like Netflix - and experts worry it could escalate to affect banking and email systems.

I can't verify that since I'm at work - anyone else notice issues with Netflix?

Spamhaus is an organization that maintains blacklists of servers known to be malicious or sources of spam. Other companies then use their blacklists to filter out spam being sent through their systems. If the attack compromises their blacklist servers, it certainly has the potential to bring various email servers to a crawl. The additional checks these email servers would have to do would indeed increase overall traffic over the internet.

Spamhaus loaded for me instantly - but they do have the following posted - dated the 20th of March, with updates posted through the 22nd:

As we mentioned yesterday, Spamhaus experienced a large-scale DDoS attack over the past weekend and extending into this week. Although this site and our mail were knocked down for awhile, our data systems continued to work normally throughout the attack. At this time the main Spamhaus website is back up (that's what you are reading!) and we're bringing other public systems back up as this goes to press. Due to the unpredictable nature of DDoS attacks, we can't provide an estimate of that progress, but we want those systems up as much as you do.

What we can tell you is that we are aware of the many people who have fixed their infected systems, and ISPs which have solved spam problems, and need to have IPs and domains removed from our lists (SBL, XBL/CBL, PBL and DBL). Those removal systems are being fixed as this is typed, and we will continue to provide updates as they come back online, in this blog article or in a newer one. Our best advice to you is to follow normal removal procedures, to re-try as needed (every hour or so) and to watch this blog for updates. Thanks for your cooperation as we ride out this attack.

From what I've read the attack is at the global internet level.
Spamhous is very distributed with servers in many countries.
It's hard to take them offline.

Normal DDoS attacks usually are in the 50mbit range.
This one is in the 300mbit range.

It's truly massive.

I guess spamers really don't like having their emails blocked.

www.businessinsider.com...

A Dutch web host called Cyberbunker states that it will host anything except child pornography or terrorism-related content. Spamhaus blocked Cyberbunker's servers in an effort to weed out any spammers that might host their content with the company.

Now Spamhaus is alleging that Cyberbunker is collaborating with a Russian and Eastern European criminal organizations to facilitate the attacks.

Read more: www.businessinsider.com...

They must have excess Viagra pills that they need to move. lol.

I saw this earlier here

Spamhaus is battling a 300 billion bits-per-second DDoS described as the ‘biggest attack in history’
thenextweb.com...

Anti-spam organization Spamhaus has been hit by a number of large-scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, bringing down its own website temporarily and causing widespread disruption across the Internet.

The BBC is reporting it as the ‘biggest cyber-attack in history,’ with The New York Times describing it as ‘one of the largest computer attacks on the Internet.’

The DDoS attacks are alleged to have originated from CyberBunker, a Dutch web hosting company that will store anything except child pornography and files related to terrorism. As a result, some of its clients are rumored to use the hosting service for spam, phishing sites and malware operations

Originally posted by grey580
Normal DDoS attacks usually are in the 50mbit range.
This one is in the 300mbit range.

It's truly massive.

I was just going to post that. It is actually 300 GB/sec at it's peak. That would require quite a few machines to accomplish that. They are blaming:

"criminal gangs" from Eastern Europe and Russia

Just heard on radio about 2 massive denial of service attacks, that are casing slow down of the whole internet.

ETA: Everything working fine on my end.

Des

reply to post by fenceSitter


They probably are using a few vectors of attack.
Rented bot nets.
Hijacked advertising.
Packet spoofing.
Etc.

Amazing how spamming can make you money.

reply to post by fenceSitter

I can't verify that since I'm at work - anyone else notice issues with Netflix?

Loading and playing just fine.

As per the Internet Traffic Report:

www.internettrafficreport.com...

Asia
87
128
0 %
Australia
85
147
0 %
Europe
84
154
0 %
North America
92
72
0 %
South America
82
178
0 %

There is nothing currently wrong with the internet. The idea that a single attack could disrupt the entire internet based on just Denial of Service is a bit far fetched.

The internet is a bit more robust that people would like to think.

~Tenth

What's Spamhaus?

Never heard of it.

Originally posted by neo96
reply to post by fenceSitter

 

I can't verify that since I'm at work - anyone else notice issues with Netflix?

Loading and playing just fine.

Last night I thought Netflix was streaming better than usual!

Please, no not Netflix.... Whatever will we do?

I'd be lying if I said I didn't hear about this but like most said already, an attack like this has yet to be seen and I've had no connection issues at all. (Chicago/Southside) Maybe I'm out of range? LOL

Guess we'll just have to wait and see~

reply to post by tothetenthpower

I noticed that too - nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Apparently this has been going on all week too. I'm sure a ddos attack against the right servers could cause quite a disruption for some but I have to agree, I don't think it could make a noticeable difference around the world.

Maybe it is being over-exaggerated by the media/law enforcement to help push the ongoing onslaught of legislation around the world trying to lock the internet down?

reply to post by fenceSitter
I just ran speed tests using two different sites and my internet speed is the same as it usually is, although some jerk with a California IPO tried to hack my e-mail this morning... what a lovely thing to wake up to!

Originally posted by Manhater
What's Spamhaus?

Never heard of it.

Spamhaus.org

Spamhaus tracks the Internet's worst Spammers, known Spam Gangs and Spam Support Services, and works with ISPs and Law Enforcement Agencies to identify and remove persistent spammers from the Internet.

Essentially they manage a blacklist of known spamming servers which other organizations can use to help filter spam from their company email systems.

reply to post by fenceSitter


They say this has been going on for a week. Which coincides with a massive slowing down of my tethered net access. However, I do find it a bit far-fetched that two internet organisations having a hissy fit is the bigget attack ever.

My mind is not yet made up on this but it feels like to me that Spamhaus are operating under a restricted internet agenda, and as such could easily be a TPTB front organisation. Whilst the hosting company is standing up for a free internet, but being demonised not only as a source of Spam, but of a more criminal and malicious internet.

Information wants to be free.

PS. I don't care whether the hollywood movie companies only make hundreds of millions from their movies instead of billions. Reduce the cost of cinema going, release on other formats quicker and more cheaply and people won't feel the need to pirate. Same goes for CDs. £14 at release in a shop, or £9 online/digital? Too much. If the shops can happily sell them for under £5 a couple of weeks later then it shouldn't be so high in the first place.

PPS. Is this the start of an artificial 'internet scarcity' meme? They're doing it for everything else. Why not? Excess bandwidth required for netflix lol?

Had some trouble last night and this morning but it might just be related to my local provider.

...this type of thing will be more and more common. Welcome to the age of Cyberwars.