By James Simons-
Several popular websites were taken offline for hours on Friday, following a critical internet point was hit by multiple cyber attacks.
Hackers brought hundreds of sites down, including Twitter, EBay and the Telegraph offline for millions of users after targeting Dyn- a New Hampshire-based company that is responsible for routing Internet traffic. the eye of media.com was Affected also.
BLACKOUTS
The attacks created blackouts for millions of Internet users. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but experts said they were simple enough to have been carried out by an individual teenager. No personal data of Internet users is known to have been stolen, neither has it been stated that any individuals’ security has been compromised.
OFFLINE
A first attack on the company shortly after noon sent websites offline for more than two hours, with a second attack occurring less than three hours later, causing more disruption. It affected many of the biggest websites in the UK and the US, including several major news outlets, the music service Spotify and Reddit, the social network.
Dyn said the attackers had used a so-called distributed denial of service attack, which enables them to remotely take control of thousands of insecure internet routers and computers and flood the target with traffic.
DOMAIN NAME SERVERS ARE CENTRAL TO OPERATION OF THE INTERNET
How DNS works
The overloading of an internet server, prevents its ability to respond to most normal queries, making it impossible for internet browsers to connect with websites. Collective attacks on DNS hosts are typically much more effective than targeting a single website because hundreds of sites rely on them to direct traffic.
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“Domain Name Service providers are central to the operation of the Internet,” said Dave Larson, the chief technology officer of Corero, an internet security company. “ So denial of service attacks targeted specifically against DNS providers can be especially damaging.”
The attack first took Dyn’s infrastructure offline shortly after midday. While service was restored at around 2.20pm, a second attack struck the company shortly before 5pm.
Denial of service attacks are simple but notoriously difficult to defend against, making them a favorite of Internet pranksters. Using easily-available software, hackers can scan for vulnerable computer systems and turn thousands of them against a single target.
An explosion in poorly-secured Internet devices, such as “smart” thermostats and televisions, has vastly increased the number of vulnerable systems in recent years, making attacks more effective.