Tag: ddos

  • Google blocked the largest DDoS attack ever, peaking at 46 million requests per second

    Google blocked the largest DDoS attack ever, peaking at 46 million requests per second

    While it’s just now being reported on, the DDoS attack on Google Cloud occurred on June 1st and lasted for 69 minutes – reaching a peak of 46 million requests per second.

    Source: Google Cloud

    We’ve covered Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks before in this blog, but the scale of this one is mind boggling. It’s nearly twice the size of Cloudflare DDoS attack from last year around this same time, which peaked at 26 million requests per second (sent from just over 5000 devices).

    If you’re wondering where the devices used in these attacks originate from, the answer in this case is unsecured devices. Specifically compromised Mikrotik routers.

    There’s been a number of articles regarding possible compromises to the Mikrotik brand of router including one instance that involved over 200,000 devices. Many in the security space wondered if there would be a fallout from that and now, we have our answer.

    However, what’s more impressive is not the scale of this attack, but the fact that it was successfully blocked by Google.

    Botnet attacks of this nature are not rare, it’s difficult to say exactly how many attacks occur per day but it has been noted they’re on the rise since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A botnet is essentially an assembly of compromised devices that are used to attack a target. DDoS attacks are one of the most common uses, but they’re also used for phishing, cryptomining, or to bruteforce passwords just to name a few. The largest botnet ever recorded belonged to Russian BredoLab and consisted of 30,000,000 devices.

    Would be bad actors can even purchase DDoS as a service for as little as $5 per hour which should give you an indication how prevalent and common they are as an attack vector.

    Google blocked this attack by leveraging their Cloud Armor product, a network security service directly aimed at preventing DDoS attacks. If they were looking for a powerful case study for the effectiveness of this product, we can think of no better example then effectively blocking the largest DDoS attack in history (so far).

    Part of blocking a DDoS attack is early detection. DDoS attacks ramp up, if you can detect an incoming flux of peculiar traffic to your network you can block the attack before it’s able to scale up and cripple your network.

    Besides blocking potential attacks, the other side of the coin is not becoming an unwilling participant in a botnet through a compromised device in your home or business.

    The sinister part of it is you may not even be aware your device is compromised and it’s not just mobile devices and personal computers that can be affected, even IoT (Internet of Things) devices can be hacked. There are a few things you can do to prevent your devices from being taken over by hackers as we outline in the chart below:

    If your business needs assistance with protecting from any potential attacks or making sure your devices stay uncompromised, Valley Techlogic can help. All of our plans include robust cybersecurity protections at no additional charge, including assisting in your cyber security training goals (after all, human error is the #1 cause of data breaches). Schedule a consultation today to learn more.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley Techlogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • We have updated our most popular resource for 2022 and have an offer you won’t want to pass up

    We have updated our most popular resource for 2022 and have an offer you won’t want to pass up

    As an IT service provider, we’re passionate about cybersecurity because we see the effects having inadequate coverage can have on businesses first hand.

    The devastation that can occur after a cyber attack is staggering, we’ve given you the statistics before, such as:

    1. The cost of cybercrime is predicted to hit $10.5 trillion by 2025
    2. Cryptojacking cases quadrupled in 2021, but the hackers don’t make very much (less than $6 per day), however that doesn’t stop them from trying to gain access to your machines
    3. It takes on average 287 for cybersecurity teams to detect and contain a data breach
    4. Phishing is involved in 36% of data breaches (can you identify the signs of a phishing email?)
    5. DDoS (Distributed Denial-of-Service) attacks are skyrocketing, with 9.75 million occurring in 2021

    That’s why we’re thrilled to announce the release of our Tech Tip Card Deck, our deck contains 56 tips for getting your cybersecurity house in order with custom art representing each tip. Best of all, the deck is absolutely free to business owners in our area.

    Beyond providing comprehensive technical support, we also want to support our community in staying safe online. If you’re a business owner in Central Valley and would like to have a set of our card deck for yourself, simply visit TechTipCards.com and request one today and we’ll get it shipped out to you ASAP.

    We don’t believe technology has to be intimidating, each bite sized tip featured in the deck is easy to understand and easy to implement and will create real results for the online safety of yourself, your employees, and your business.

    To up the offer even more, we have updated our most popular for 2022 and are also offering it to you right here, right now. Simply grab it below.

     

    Valley Techlogics Cybersecurity Checklist
    Click to grab the full size version.

    Both of these are just a small showcase of what’s in store, we know for most people repetition is the key to success. We plan to deliver weekly content including thought provoking reports, eye catching resources that can even be customized for your office, and tech advice that can greatly impact and improve your use of technology within your business.

    If you’d like to learn more, again visit TechTipCards.com or reach out to us for a free consultation today.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • Yesterday, Facebook experienced their worst outage since 2008

    Yesterday, Facebook experienced their worst outage since 2008

    Yesterday if you were trying to login to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or even Oculus VR you wouldn’t have had much luck. Facebook experienced their worst outage since 2008 (when a bug caused the site to be down for an entire day). They were down for just over 6 hours as a world that suddenly found themselves with more time on their hands speculated why.

    For a brief period, the domain Facebook.com was even for sale if you performed a search for the domain on a domain name search website.

    While many thought it could be an attack on their networks, such as what’s been happening in the VoIP sector lately, others speculated the outage was related to the fire Facebook has been under lately for their business practices.

    On Sunday, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen – a former Facebook project manager – went public on how Facebooks policies prioritize profits over their user’s wellbeing. She was the person responsible for the massive data dump that showed Facebook’s algorithms even optimize for hate speech. She noted these problems also exist at Google and Pinterest, other companies she’s performed similar duties for, but that the problem is much worst at Facebook.

    Mark Zuckerberg Meme
    There have been no shortage of memes taking shots at Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg following the outage.

    Hearings begin this week analyzing the whistleblower findings, particularly as they relate to children on these sites. Amid the controversy Facebook has shelved plans for an Instagram Kids app, though Facebook claims the delay is so they can better analyze the needs of children and parents before moving forward with the app.

    The main crux of the case has to do with both the deluge of data and how major players such as Facebook (and likely beyond) serve that data to their users. It’s a tricky situation because you don’t want to stifle free speech but promoting hate speech and negative imagery, especially to vulnerable audiences such as children, is also wrong.

    There is so much more to the case then we can get to here but suffice to say hearings such as these play an important role in how we as a society consume and regulate data.

    Back to the topic at hand though, after being down for 6 hours Facebook finally emerged although they did so with little in the way of answers as to why their domains were down to the first place. They’ve issued an apology for the outage but beyond that silence.

    Experts who have weighed in speculate the issue had to do with Facebooks DNS (Domain Name System), and anonymous comments that have surfaced from employees said they don’t think the downtime was caused by an attack.

    Some reports have even said during the outage functions inside Facebook offices ground to a halt, with some employees being unable to even use their keycards which could have also contributed to the lengthy delay in fixing the problem.

    Outages such as these should cause even smaller businesses to take a hard look at their technology practices. If Facebook, with the resources they have available, can be brought to a standstill for hours over potentially a small issue such as DNS how would your business fare when faced with a similar issue?

    Downtime adds up, but it doesn’t have to. Having a partner in technology like Valley Techlogic is the number one way your business can avoid the hassle, expense, and embarrassment of lengthy downtime. Find out more today.

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, adns, n IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • Massive DDoS Attacks Cripple VoIP Services

    Massive DDoS Attacks Cripple VoIP Services

    If you use VoIP in your business, you may have been affected by service outages so far this week.

    That’s because Bandwidth.com, a major hosting provider for VoIP services such as Accent, Ring Central, Twilio and more has been under assault by a major distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. While they’re working tirelessly to reroute call streams, as of Tuesday outages were still occurring nationwide.

    Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are not a new occurrence in the VoIP world, hackers regularly target VoIP services in an effort to gain a ransom to make the attacks stop. Canadian VoIP provider, VoIP.ms, has been under siege since last week by a DDoS attack being performed by the hacking group REvil.

    REvil, a Russian linked ransomware gang, was also responsible for the attacks on Kaseya that made major news in July. They are demanding $4.5 million from VoIP.ms to end the attacks but so far VoIP.ms is holding firm and not giving in to the demands.

    You may be wondering what happens during a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack or even what a DDoS attack is. During a DDoS attack hackers flood the target networks with service requests, bogging down the systems until they either slow to a crawl or go offline completely due to the overload.

    To put some context behind it, Cloudflare a cybersecurity oriented service provider that helps websites mitigate DDoS attacks were themselves hit by a DDoS attack last month that served their website 17.2 million requests per second. The real target of the DDoS attack, a financial customer of Cloudflare, was served 330 million attack requests in seconds. Most websites and online servers cannot bear the brunt of that many requests instantaneously.

    VoIP providers are an easy target for ransomware, cutting off communications to the outside world for those who are affected is a tangible problem that creates a heightened sense of urgency. The same urgency cannot be replicated from your business’s website being down for a while, though the loss of revenue that may occur from that should not be overlooked. For some business’s that loss can equal as high as $250,000 hourly.

    You may be thinking, I can’t have my phones go down I’ll just switch back to a landline provider even if the cost is higher and it would lack many of the features acquired with VoIP. I’m sorry to say It would do you no good.

    Nothing is truly cut off from the web these days, even your typical landline phone utilizes a web-based connection somewhere down the line. POTS aka Plain Old Telephone Service which performed phone services over copper wires is going the way of the dodo in most places.

    The FCC even called for a mandatory termination of POTS lines In 2014. As of 2018 only 5% of the country was landline only.

    To sum it up, avoiding the internet when it comes to making phone calls is no longer a possibility. With that said we understand that having your phone lines down is disruptive and unnerving. We’ve created this checklist with steps to take if you find your phone service down.

    If you don’t have a service provider to reach out to in the event of a service outage, we can help. We are proud of our VoIP service solutions and the reliable uptime we maintain for our clients. You can learn more about our VoIP services here. We even have a promotion for new customers. ?

    Looking for more to read? We suggest these other articles from our site.

    This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT service provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

  • DDoS Attack or Not? Yesterday’s Outage Left Many Systems Down for Hours

    DDoS Attack or Not? Yesterday’s Outage Left Many Systems Down for Hours

    Yesterday, an outage stemming from T-Mobile left many major systems down. Affected websites included T-Mobile itself, Instagram, Comcast, Sprint and Chase Bank. Was it a massive DDoS attack or just a server misconfiguration as they’re claiming?

    First, it’s probably a good idea to explain what a DDoS attack or Distributed Denial-of-Service attack is and what it aims to do.

    A DDoS attack is a cyber attack where the perpetrator or group of perpetrators seeks to make a server or network unavailable by attacking its connection to the internet. They typically do this by flooding the affected systems with traffic, overloading them and causing them to go down.

    These attacks can happen to a single computer, an office, or even on a global scale. The website https://digitalattackmap.com/ attempts to track these DDoS attacks on a global level, however it’s somewhat controversial among cyber security experts as they question the veracity of it’s data.

    Many time these outages are made apparent by the website https://downdetector.com/ which accurately tracked the cascading wave of websites that went down in yesterdays event.

    Down Detector is a reliable source for tracking whether the connection issues you’re having are stemming from your network or the website or service you’re trying to access is truly down.

    So, was yesterday’s event a DDoS attack or just an error? The public will probably never know. However as cyber crime continues to ramp up – purported to be a $6 trillion dollar industry by 2021 – it’s a good idea to have the best protections in place so you and your business don’t fall victim.

    A DDoS attack aimed at your systems may expose other vulnerabilities, and the downtime alone can be costly. If your IT team isn’t adequately prepared to defend against this or any of the other varieties of cyber attacks plaguing the technology market, it might be time for a new team.

    This article was powered by Valley TechLogic, an IT provider in Atwater, CA. You can find more information at https://www.valleytechlogic.com/ or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/valleytechlogic/ . Follow us on Twitter at https://x.com/valleytechlogic.

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