Akamai – Page 4 – Network Securitas

August 28, 2017

Tech Firms Team Up to Take Down ‘WireX’ Android DDoS Botnet

This post was originally published on this siteA half dozen technology and security companies — some of them competitors — issued the exact same press release today. This unusual level of cross-industry collaboration caps a successful effort to dismantle ‘WireX,’ an extraordinary new crime machine comprising tens of thousands of hacked Android mobile devices that was used this month to launch a series of massive cyber attacks. Experts involved in the takedown warn that WireX marks the emergence of a new class of attack tools that are more challenging to defend against and thus require broader industry cooperation to defeat. This graphic shows […]

October 23, 2017

Reaper: Calm Before the IoT Security Storm?

This post was originally published on this siteIt’s been just over a year since the world witnessed some of the world’s top online Web sites being taken down for much of the day by “Mirai,” a zombie malware strain that enslaved “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices such as wireless routers, security cameras and digital video recorders for use in large-scale online attacks. Now, experts are sounding the alarm about the emergence of what appears to be a far more powerful strain of IoT attack malware — variously named “Reaper” and “IoTroop” — that spreads via security holes in IoT software […]

December 13, 2017

Mirai IoT Botnet Co-Authors Plead Guilty

This post was originally published on this siteThe U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday unsealed the guilty pleas of two men first identified in January 2017 by KrebsOnSecurity as the likely co-authors of Mirai, a malware strain that remotely enslaves so-called “Internet of Things” devices such as security cameras, routers, and digital video recorders for use in large scale attacks designed to knock Web sites and entire networks offline (including multiple major attacks against this site). Entering guilty pleas for their roles in developing and using Mirai are 21-year-old Paras Jha from Fanwood, N.J. and Josiah White, 20, from Washington, Pennsylvania. Jha […]

March 2, 2018

Powerful New DDoS Method Adds Extortion

This post was originally published on this siteAttackers have seized on a relatively new method for executing distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks of unprecedented disruptive power, using it to launch record-breaking DDoS assaults over the past week. Now evidence suggests this novel attack method is fueling digital shakedowns in which victims are asked to pay a ransom to call off crippling cyberattacks. On March 1, DDoS mitigation firm Akamai revealed that one of its clients was hit with a DDoS attack that clocked in at 1.3 Tbps, which would make it the largest publicly recorded DDoS attack ever. The type of […]