New Botnet Wreaks Havoc on West Coast
Posted by: Timothy Weaver on 12/07/2016 01:24 PM
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A new botnet, not related to Mirai, has been causing havoc on the west coast.
Security experts at CloudFlare have said that this new botnet is capable of causing enormous distributed denial-of-service attacks. They posit that if this new botnet is just starting up, it could be as deadly as Mirai.
The new botnet has been causing disturbances along the west coast for ten days. It is capable of sending over 480 gigabits per second (Gbps) and 200 million packets per second (Mpps).
The first attack occurred on Nov. 23; peaking at 400 Gbps and 172 Mpps, which lasted for eight and a half hours. The attacker seemed to be working office hours. The second attack reached over 480 Gbps and 200 Mpps. After cyber-Monday, the attacker started working 24 hours.
If this new botnet picked up some other DDoS strains it would be much more powerful than Mirai. There is a caution that it may pick up additional IoT devices come Christmas. It does not bode well for gamers this holiday season.
“Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the holiday season in general have long been characterized by a rise in the threat of DDoS attacks,” the Akamai report stated. “Malicious actors have new tools – IoT botnets – that will almost certainly be used in the coming quarter.”
“It is very likely that malicious actors are now working diligently to understand how they can capture their own huge botnet of IoT devices to create the next largest DDoS ever."
Source: Computer World
The new botnet has been causing disturbances along the west coast for ten days. It is capable of sending over 480 gigabits per second (Gbps) and 200 million packets per second (Mpps).
The first attack occurred on Nov. 23; peaking at 400 Gbps and 172 Mpps, which lasted for eight and a half hours. The attacker seemed to be working office hours. The second attack reached over 480 Gbps and 200 Mpps. After cyber-Monday, the attacker started working 24 hours.
If this new botnet picked up some other DDoS strains it would be much more powerful than Mirai. There is a caution that it may pick up additional IoT devices come Christmas. It does not bode well for gamers this holiday season.
“Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the holiday season in general have long been characterized by a rise in the threat of DDoS attacks,” the Akamai report stated. “Malicious actors have new tools – IoT botnets – that will almost certainly be used in the coming quarter.”
“It is very likely that malicious actors are now working diligently to understand how they can capture their own huge botnet of IoT devices to create the next largest DDoS ever."
Source: Computer World
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