Bots, Bots Everywhere: 5 Largest DDoS Attacks in the History of the Internet

We know how a DDoS attacks can overwhelm a system’s resources and take it down to the ground.  

But sometimes DDoS attacks can scale beyond our wildest imaginations. We’re talking about attacks that clock bandwidths in tera and giga bite ranges and notoriously leave their marks in history books.

Spamhaus

Spamhaus is a non-profit anti-spam organization based in London and Geneva.

In 2013, Spamhaus website, email servers and DNS IPs were taken down by a DDoS attack that measured in at 300 gigabits per second.

Investigations traced the attack to a member of Dutch company named Cyberbunker.

CloudFlare

CloudFlare is a content delivery network (CDN) and security service provider headquartered in San Francisco.

In 2014, CloudFlare’s network was slammed by a DDoS attack that peaked at more than 400 gigabits per second.

The attack was originally directed at a CloudFlare customer, but it was so powerful that it brought down the company’s entire network to its knees.   

The perpetrators leveraged the NTP servers to launch the attack.

Occupy Central Movement

Occupy Central was a Hong Kong civil disobedience campaign initiated by Benny Tai, Reverend Chu Yiu-ming and Dr. Chan Kin-man in 2013, advocating for a democratic electoral system.

Unimpressed by the movement, attackers sent large amount of traffic to Occupy Central’s webhosting services, causing the servers to crash.

The DDoS attack recruited five botnets and measured in at 500 gigabits per second.

2) Dyn

Dyn, Inc. is an internet performance management and web application security company based in the U.S.

In 2016, Dyn was targeted by a series of DDoS attacks which spiked up to 1.2 terabits per second.  The attacks used mirai-infected IoT-enabled devices to bombard the company’s servers.

The SpainSquad, New World Hackers and Anonymous claimed the responsibility for the attacks.

GitHub

GitHub is a code hosting platform for collaboration and version control.

On February 28, 2018, GitHub was taken down by a DDoS attack that clocked in at a whopping 1.35 terabits per second.  

Interestingly, the attack did not use any botnet network, and instead relied on misconfigured Memcached servers for amplification.   

The attack remains the largest DDoS attack ever recorded in the history of the internet. 

Is your business protected against potential DDoS attacks? Don’t be vulnerable; call our cybersecurity experts today and make sure you’re covered from any and all threats.    

Highlighting Open Source Software – How Detrimental It Is For Your Company

Like many businesses looking to increase productivity and efficiency without shelling out the extra bucks, you also must have thought about exploring the world of open source software.

After all, it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot for Photoshop or Microsoft Office with better, more efficient and less costly (sometimes free) software available in the market!

Why should you even fork a ton of money on the newest Windows operating system for your business’s computer system when other cheap alternatives are easily available?

It does make sense to choose the cheaper alternative for some web applications. However, using open source software isn’t all milk and honey.

Try and learn more about this type of software before implementing in your operation.

Open Source Software – What It’s All About

It is a term that refers to something which can be modified and shared as its design is publically accessible. The term open source is normally used in the concept of software development, to design computer programs using a different or specific approach.

Understanding Open Source Software

It is simple software with source code that allows barrier free access to content. Any software with such an open source code can be inspected, modified, and enhanced by people.

Source code is the part of software program that cannot be seen i.e. most computer users don’t ever see it. This is the code that individuals (programmers and hackers) manipulate and use to change entire aspects of a program or application. They can change how it works.

Still planning to give open source software a chance? Following are some advantages that can convince any company to try this type of software:

• Cheaper than commercially marketed software
• Helps an organisation become more flexible
• Created by expert programmers
• Highly reliable and efficient

As mentioned above, it’s not always milk and honey when it comes to using OSS. There are some disadvantages of this type of software, the first and most important one being security vulnerabilities.

While all software has some bugs and internal vulnerabilities – OSS has the added disadvantage of being used by malicious users for their own gain.

Older software usually has more security vulnerabilities that often go undetected or unreported. Make sure the OSS you are using isn’t out-of-date by many months or years.

You can have the web application security services of Lean Security at your beck and call during implementation of OSS or even closed sourced software. Check out our full service catalogue here.

5 Shortcuts for Choosing the Perfect Vulnerability Scanner in Record Time

Any shop that comes with internet access should scan the network of it and also, the systems on a regular basis for vulnerability. On the other hand, old-fangled tools made it a time-consuming and painful effort. Before we proceed to the six shortcuts for selecting the most ideal vulnerability scanner, it is important to know what vulnerability scanner is.

Vulnerability Scanner – What Is It?

A vulnerability scanner, as the name implies, is something that can be used to scan your system like computer, router or server or network. It also identifies and then reports back on the open ports, active IP addresses & log-ons. A scanner software program compares the details that it detects against the identified vulnerabilities in the database of it or to a 3rd party database like CVE, OSVDB and OVAL. A scanner usually prioritizes those identified vulnerabilities as major, critical or minor. One great thing about the vulnerability scanner is that this can detect the malicious services like Trojans which are listening in on the ports of the system.

Not all the scanners are equal, although. There are many low-end & free vulnerability scanner just scans the system or network and then renders remedial reporting. There are more feature-rich tools which add patch management & penetration testing. On the other hand, there are a lot of scanners both high-end and low-end, suffer from false-negatives and false- positives. A false-positive usually results to an administrator that chases down information regarding a problem which does not exist. A false-negative is worse while it means that the scanner has failed to report or identify something which poses a severe security risk.

You should look for software-based vulnerability scanners which offer targeted reports coming from different devices. You should shop around using the internet and these forms of scanning products usually include target profiling, configuration auditing, penetration testing as well as comprehensive vulnerability analysis.

There are cloud-based vulnerability scanners that provide consistent and on-demand monitoring. With on-demand scanner, there is no installation, maintenance or manual integration needed. All you need is to subscribe to the service and then constitute your scans. Vulnerability scanning has become a need for medium-size and enterprise environments, thinking of a huge number of network segments, servers, firewalls, routers, and other business devices that are used. The attack surface is just extremely spacious not to scan on a regular basis.

Choosing the Best Vulnerability Scanner

1. Permit enough time. It is hard to test for precision within a compressed time frame. It will take time for you to feel comfortable with various configuration strategies and then compare the results. It takes more time to check and then re-check the reports for precision.
2. Use real application and not a public test application.
3. Find a reliable vendor.
4. Choose a vulnerability scanner that offers ease of use.
5. Consider vulnerability variations.

There are many programs out there that you can use to avoid the risks of vulnerability. Just be sure to choose the best. Do your research and know your options.

Protecting Your Network Perimeter: Life on the Edge

Your perimeter security is the first and foremost layer of defense in your network, which is why it’s of the utmost importance to step back and review its design very carefully. The obvious step that you will need to take when it comes to ensuring a sound architecture, is determining what needs to be protected and then designing your network perimeter security in such a way that it can easily adapt according to your needs as they grow or change.

To make this easier to understand, think of your website’s network perimeter like a castle. The building normally has a majority of defenses attached to it; such as a moat, huge and daunting gate, high walls, guards etc. Similarly, your website should possess multiple layers of defense.

What one has to understand is that in order to come up with a great defense strategy; it is necessary to determine where the perimeter lies and the technologies involved. Simply put, the perimeter is the boundary of your website’s network, i.e. the gateway where all essential data and information flows in and out from other networks, not excluding the internet.

Perimeter defense and security acts exactly like a checkpoint does, i.e. it allows data that has been authorized to enter without any problem while blocking traffic that is suspicious. How does it achieve that?

Through Border Routers

The first layer of defense against unauthorized and suspicious online traffic, network routers work just like traffic cops and direct data into, within and out of networks.

A special kind of router, it stands vigilant between your network and the internet or any other external network. Installing this line of defense is probably a wise idea as all internet traffic and activity necessarily pass through the border router, hence making it a logical place for filtering anything that comes or go outs.

Through Firewalls

The basic job of a firewall is to stop or permit data from coming into or out of the network. For achieving the purpose of perimeter defense and security; software is widely available either installed as a router or as a standalone device.

The services that a firewall can provide to your website’s network security are many. Such a software or device can analyze all transactions to make sure that inbound packets were asked for. It can also block data from IP addresses and ports that have been specified and last but not the least, a firewall ensures a network address translation feature.

Through VPNs

A VPN or virtual private network provides perimeter security to your website’s network by putting it into a simple code or encrypted data that is sent between remote users and your business network, over the internet. To understand this more easily, VPNs create a kind of private tunnel through the internet.

This technology is very popular amongst enterprises and business of all sizes and should particularly help you in the pursuit of creating a secure and safe network for your online business.

Through Intrusion Detection Systems

Installing such a system will protect your website’s network, by analyzing ingoing and outgoing traffic and detecting suspicious activity. Due to this system, your website’s network administrator will be immediately notified of any suspicious activity in the event of anything unusual being detected.

This will ensure that the right people can take prompt action to stop an unwanted invasion into the network. Lean Security, a managed web hosting service provider in Australia offers products and software which are not only effective in providing just what you want in terms of security, but are also best suited to your budget, so contact us now!

What is Network Perimeter and how to Secure it?

Network perimeters are basically the boundaries between locally managed and privately managed sections of a network and the public and usually provider-managed side of a network. It is a network that is closest to a router that you are not allowed to control.

A perimeter network usually is the concluding step that a packet has to take when navigating one of the networks whilst going to the internet. It is also the first network that the incoming traffic from the internet has to go through. Majority of network administrators construct perimeter networks with the intention of placing firewalls in between the outside world and their system in order to be able to filter packet traffic.

WHY SECURE IT?

The security of perimeter network ensures that the entire information technology system of an enterprise is completely safe from the hackers that might be trying to intrude and steal sensitive information to put the enterprise in danger.

Enterprises that do not keep their networks secure are exposed to all potential threats. They should know that taking preventive measures is always better than having to fix an unexpected problem because it may end up in losses that cannot be recovered and it is not wise to delude yourself into thinking that your network is safe from all sorts of threats.

HOW TO SECURE IT?

To analyze what kind of a security plan your enterprise’s network needs, you need to understand the workings of your network. This would serve as the first layer of protection. In order to guarantee a safe architecture that you can depend on, you should initiate with comprehending what must be defended. After that, you should look into designing your network perimeter security.

This way you will be able to alter it as your requirements will change over time. Make sure that this design is flexible and will fulfill your future needs when they change a little. Good network security perimeter architecture entails numerous layers of protection, advanced policies and proper segmentation. This will make it almost impossible for a hacker to intrude.

Taking help from a Managed Security Service Provider is the best way to go about it, because then you don’t have to worry about securing your network and will be saving time and money as well.

At Lean Security, we go out of our way to provide our clients with multilayered network perimeter security solutions. Our service is based on our understanding of typical internal and external threats associated with the perimeter of the corporate cloud network of your organization. Morover, we offer remarkable quality at the most reasonable cost.