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Major Internet Attack
Several websites including Twitter and Tumblr were unreachable during an extended period for many internet users Friday following an online attack.
Web technology provider Dyn said its domain name system, or DNS, service was subject to a massive distributed denial-of-service attack starting at 7:10 a.m. on Friday.
Denial of service attacks can knock websites offline by flooding them with junk data, blocking the way for legitimate users. Dyn’s DNS services are a key part of the digital supply chain that allows web addresses—Twitter.com, for instance—to take users to the infrastructure that hosts them.
Should we be pleased that they didn’t punch through our security, or dismayed that they didn’t think we were worth attacking?
Whodunnit?
Were you affected?
Published in General
So we lost snark and smut for a time. We’ll rebuild.
As usual Krebs on Security has one of the best write ups on the matter with some good speculation on possible motives.
A good piece for anyone interested in taking a deeper dive into the matter.
Almost everyone one I know had to work for about 20 minutes.
Seems to be ongoing. I just tried to visit Twitter and the DNS couldn’t find it.
Ricochet wasn’t responding for a few minutes just now, but there were other sites that weren’t either, so I don’t know if it was an attack on you, an attack on my IP, or a squirrel chewing through a cable somewhere.
Even snarkier and smuttier.
State.gov and Defense.gov are down for me. Can any of you reach them?
https://www.dhs.gov/ is down.
http://sputniknews.com/ is also down for me. Can any of you reach these sites, or is this local?
Just got into both.
Maybe the Russian response to Obama’s Cyber-rattling. (Cyber! Saber! Get it? I slay me!).
Though if Putin really wanted to hurt us, he’d ignore Twitter and instead take down our porn sites. THEN you’d seen the world come to a stop.
Could this be the Clinton campaign and its accomplices engineering something to blame on Trump supporters? Sort of a Democrat version of the Reichstag Fire?
Oh gosh, I’m sorry, everyone. I tripped over a power cord and it came out of the socket. I’ll put it back. You should all be OK very soon.
Burn! :)
Same here, just now. I was able to see it earlier today, though.
According to their status page the attack is indeed ongoing.
Apparently our .gov sites aren’t.
Lucky you!
I hope State.gov doesn’t lose any emails as a result of this.
Imagine a world with no Twitter? A world with no Facebook? Where can we find better hackers?
Not a biggie. On the rare occasion I try to respond to a tweet, the android twitter app crashes. They must have me confused with Instapundit.
Ricochet just went down for me, too.
Wasn’t it State that had a subcontractor administrating digital security located in mainland China?
Or was that the OPM?
Either way government servers aren’t known for robust security or infrastructure.
Either way, it would not surprise me if this way an individual operating solo to extort money or a state actor. If it was a state actor I’d guess Russia over China.
God forbid.
The government would actually get more terrible things done.
Basil Fawlty:
Maybe they can run Clintonemail.com as a backup.
Have you tried clearing your cache?
@blueyeti
I think the FBI sent the email server to the crusher.
Dyn also uses anycast DNS. There business model is essentially…this not happening to their clients. http://dyn.com/dns/network-map/
If it is a volumetric attack, it must be quite serious to cripple them like this and whoever is attacking could have probably done the same thing to many other providers (though not necessarily). If it is based on exploiting a defect in their infrastructure, then that is another story but there is a reason that popular websites would use Dyn and other services like them.
You always need to avoid putting your eggs in one basket where possible.
The Russians really dig their work…