Hi, guys this is just a copy & paste but an interesting read:
Anti-spam group Spamhaus was hit by a wave of cyber attacks last month after trying to block internet traffic from CyberBunker, an organisation which provides websites for firms offering what it describes as anything except child porn and terrorism.
CyberBunker, which is based in a Cold War bunker in the Dutch countryside, has been accused of involvement in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, where a site is overwhelmed with service requests often from hijacked computers to the point that it cannot deal with legitimate traffic.
Web performance company CloudFlare, which was called in to deal with the Spamhaus attack, has described it as the DDoS that almost broke the internet and says it may have made internet services sluggish, particularly in Europe.
A CloudFlare release on the attack reads: Over the last few days as these attacks have increased, weve seen congestion () primarily in Europe where most of the attacks were concentrated, that would have affected hundreds of millions of people even as they surfed sites unrelated to Spamhaus or CloudFlare.
Method of attack
And, while the extent of its fallout has been disputed, the method of attack could cause huge damage in the future.
Professor Alan Woodward, a visiting professor at Surrey University who has previously worked for the government, disagrees with claims that the onslaught managed to slow down the internet, but says it highlights a new method of DDoS which could result in chaos unless people wake up to the threat.
In the past, whats happened in a classic DDoS attack was lots of PCs sending simple requests to a web server until its too much to deal with its essentially an electronic sit-in, he says.
But this attack used a different technique, involving Domain Name System (DNS) severs which translate domain names into IP addresses essentially the phone book of the internet.
When we make a request to the DNS, it sends back up to 100 times what you sent it. The Spamhaus attack involved making requests to the DNS with a spoof user name.
The attack did cause some disruption, but it only used 30,000 DNS servers but there are 25m that could be subverted this way.
DDoS attacks have dealt blows to major banks including American Express in the past, but the new method could result in much bigger attacks.
Time to pay attention
Woodward wrote a BBC post on March 27, 2012 exactly one year before the internet-busting Spamhaus attack warning about the new attack method, and says people now need to pay attention.
He says: I got hate mail from people saying You dont know what youre talking about, but they need to pay attention to this now.
You can solve the problem by reconfiguring the servers, but the issue is nobody wants to be responsible for it. The government cant do anything, because they dont run the infrastructure.
A large-scale attack could deal a huge blow to businesses and services across the world. In one estimate made two years ago, cyber security specialist BAE Systems Detica said UK firms could lose 27bn from cybercrime and cyber espionage every year.
In an article about the recent attack, a Spamhaus representative writes: Core internet infrastructure may be overwhelmed by the amount of traffic involved in an attack.
When that happens, all traffic that passes through that part of the internet is impacted.
Grave threats
But Woodward warns there are much graver threats than those to business and internet services.
He says: The threat isnt just to UK PLC the threat to the national infrastructure is what concerns me most.
There are all these stories about countries planning to build nuclear weapons. But why would you bomb a country into submission, when you can just turn the lights off [using a cyber attack]?
The threat is quite widespread you even have videos on Youtube advertising DDoS attacks.
Harry Sverdlove, chief technology officer for global cyber security firm Bit9, says the Spamhaus case could lead to more advanced attacks of its kind.
He says: We are witnessing the largest DDoS attack in history. Today its that one company, but now that information is out there for everybody.
People with other motives are now going to be able to do that.
And cyber attacks are not likely to stop. While hacker groups such as Anonymous seem determined to keep going after their targets, disputes such as the one between Spamhaus and CyberBunker could keep flaring up leading to more friction and attacks.
And with CyberBunkers general manager Jordan Robson criticising Spamhaus for making childish claims about his organisations activities, this spat looks unlikely to die down. The results for business could be disastrous
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