Biggest DDoS Attack ever hits US and Europe

[d@rk51d3]

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

I blame all those blenders and coffee makers connected to the internet. Never trusted those things.

Wait, are you saying I won't have coffee in the morning?

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Wait, are you saying I won't have coffee in the morning?

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Wait, are you saying I won't have coffee in the morning?

Neal, I have faith that your rough and tumble cowboy instincts will see you through.



However, if that fails there is always Starbucks.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

However, if that fails there is always Starbucks.

That's what the Toasters want you to do!!

[Jimbuna]

Surprised I haven't seen any finger pointing directed toward Putin or the Chinese yet

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Surprised I haven't seen any finger pointing directed toward Putin or the Chinese yet

Well, Dyn did say pretty early that they didn't think that this was a state sponsored entity, and then Wikileaks seems to have claimed responsibility shortly afterwards.

[STEED]

May as well log off for good at this rate.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

Wait, are you saying I won't have coffee in the morning?

Best coffee maker money can buy:


Best bean supply at least in my corner of the world:


Manual labour needed. No web-connection required. No threat of DDoS attacks at all. Virus scanners and firewalls can be left disabled.

Amazon delivering me foods? Refrigerators automatically stocking up supplies? Espresso machines linked to the web?

Hilarious! But I live in a cave anyway - my kitchen has no TV. And when I eat, I st5ill must move my jaw by muscular effort - no smartphone-programmed machine support for biting, chewing and swallowing. Life is is exhausting.

(Just in case somebody goes nuts over this, the disclaimer: )

[Skybird]

German media refer to experts by security company Norsecorp who said that this was not only thze biggest such attack ever seen - but that it as stunnihng to observe that it did no significant damage. And right this fact, these experts say, is most alarming, because they take it as an indication that somebody has launched this attack only as a test run for a very mighty, powerful cyberweapon, to see whether it works or not.

There are many nations on this planet whose capacities to handle web data traffic would have been knocked out by the scale of this attack. Most states, to be preciseIf launched for serious intentions of attacking such states, they would have had to handle a complete breakdown of their technical infrastructure. The attacked companies in this test run are all kown for having quite huge reserves in handling data traffic.

The computer electronics in the hardware of private households used in this attack were mostly made by one Chinese company, and to lower production costs the electronics components were chosen to be so cheap that they cannot be updated with firmware or new security code. The vulnerability cannot be patched.

Key code used in this attack to hack foreign gadgets and eevices and use them for the bot attack, was published already weeks ago on the web, and is known under the name "Mirai". Attackers can use it to delete their traces and makie it impossvb le to analyse their attack pattern, it also allows any "custoimer" of Mirai to construct his own peroisnal cyber weapon easily, according to his needs.

It reminds me of what I described three or four years ago, about drone technology: that drone technology components will be internationally produced and sold, but used to construct drones by just anybody, who then can attack sombody else, a nation for example, without the attcked being able to point fingers at the ID of the attcker, for even if he can get his hands on the drone, he will only find it to be build by components knowing heads can buy at will on the black - or even the open - market. Possessing the enemy's wepaon will nit help you to identify the attacker. Could be companies. States. Crime cartels. Terror organizations. Private persons with enough money. Anything goes.

The state will become more and more unable to protect its citizens form this kind of drone attacks. Could be cyber attacks. Could be assassination attacks. Could be bombing runs. Could be espionage, surveillance or computer attacks.

The nextbig war will become interesting. I think it already has begun. And there are no clear frontlines anymore.

[Oberon]

Back in the 1990s, around 1997, I brought two little books off a service that used to be run with the schools that enabled you to order books off a little magazine thing, both were to do with predictions, one was to do with Climate and the other was:



I remember one of the chapters spoke about "Grunts, Geeks and Crazies" and I think that there is still a lot of accuracy in that in a future battlefield and even to some extent in our current battlefield.

Grunts are the traditional PBI, Poor Bloody Infantry, whether they're genetically enhanced or wear exoskeletons, they will always be a part of the battlefield. Drones can and will fill a lot of roles, but there will always be human boots on the ground.
Geeks are the hackers, waging war on the internet, through social media and through direct attacks, their capability to do damage is increasing as exponentially as our interconnectivity.
Crazies are the radicals, the jihadists, the Breviks, those who are willing to kill in the name of their doctrine or have been brainwashed by others to kill. The people who are organising and recruiting the crazies are never the ones who sacrifice themselves for their goals, they use others as pawns in their goals.

Not bad for a book written in 1997, although it missed in the India/Pakistan wars and the Chinese invasion of Taiwan...well...it got the date wrong at least...who can say whether that's a missed prediction full stop.

[Onkel Neal]

Sounds pretty interesting, I will see if ebay has a copy.

[Skybird]

Militarily, autonomy is the logical next step in drones to avoid them getting hacked and hijacked. But from then on, the inhibitions to wage undeclared and unidentified wars everybody against everybody will dramatically drop.

Combine that with artificial swarm intelligence, and maybe scientists like Hawkings, warning against hightech and AI being the reason for mankind going extinct, one day may be shown to have gotten it right.

And this does not even consider autonomous swarm drones using biological and nuclear weapons.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Militarily, autonomy is the logical next step in drones to avoid them getting hacked and hijacked. But from then on, the inhibitions to wage undeclared and unidentified wars everybody against everybody will dramatically drop.

Combine that with artificial swarm intelligence, and maybe scientists like Hawkings, warning against hightech and AI being the reason for mankind going extinct, one day may be shown to have gotten it right.

And this does not even consider autonomous swarm drones using biological and nuclear weapons.

I wonder if nuclear weapons are going to go out of fashion at some point, I mean at the moment they're the most explosive weapon that we have, but also one of the most messy, especially if it's something horrific like a cobalt enhanced bomb. Same goes for biological weaponry, it's something that can cause a problem for the user as well as the enemy. Although there is a difference with biological which I'll come back to in a moment.
The weaponry that is wanted is clean and consise weaponry, pinpoint accurate long range stuff, like a tiny seeker bullet which kills only one person in a crowd. Stuff that avoids collateral damage which in a multi-media environment leads to civilian backlash.
Unfortunately that will lead to the exact opposite to what you say in the opening paragraph because such assassination weaponry will make it much much easier to wage undeclared wars.
Of course, it would be slightly harder to automate an assassination drone, it would require a clear facial recognition and body identification program which can be tricked by surgery. So you'd probably have to keep that one manned.
One that could be automated is when it comes down to genetically precise biological warfare, which I fear is literally around the corner, where a virus can be unleashed on a populace that only kills people of a particular ethnic group who have that marker in their DNA. Now that is pretty disturbing stuff, and I really hope that never happens but it's a genie in a bottle and someone will let it out someday.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Oberon

The weaponry that is wanted is clean and consise weaponry, pinpoint accurate long range stuff, like a tiny seeker bullet which kills only one person in a crowd.

Only as long as you are no crazy kiddie, religiously or politically.

Some religous lunatics think that their god wants "it". Some fatalists think "it" is inevitable anyway, and they just help evolution to speed up things a bit. And in the Eastern hemisphere you find many leaders who by their socialisation learned that a man must pose strong and has to boast and pump his chest and hit the table with his fist until it breaks. Thats why the West has misread Putin's determination since so many years.

And some just want to see the world burn. The hotter the better.