French government cyber crisis teams ‘useless’ against DDoS

Several French government websites and networks have been crippled by an intense and ongoing series of cyberattacks over the past day, with pro-Russian hacker group Anonymous Sudan mocking the government's cyber defense capabilities as "useless" against the onslaught.

The French prime minister's office confirmed the disruptive attacks on Monday, stating that "since [Sunday], several government departments have been the subject of cyberattacks whose technical methods are...

12 March 2024 | Security

NETSCOUT unveils surge in global DDoS attacks in 1H2023

netscout ddos attacks threat intelligence report security cyber cybersecurity

NETSCOUT has released its 1H2023 DDoS Threat Intelligence Report, shedding light on the escalating threat landscape.

Cybercriminals launched a staggering 7.9 million distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in the first half of 2023, marking a concerning 31 percent year-over-year increase.

The surge in DDoS attacks has been propelled by a confluence of global events, with the Russia-Ukraine conflict and NATO-related activities serving as key catalysts.

In...

26 September 2023 | Networks

Russian hackers disrupt NATO comms used for earthquake relief

Russian hacking group Killnet has claimed responsibility for disrupting communications between NATO and other organisations providing earthquake relief in Turkey and Syria.

The devastating earthquake has claimed at least 28,000 lives and efforts continue to pull victims from the rubble. Countries and NGOs worldwide dispatched resources to provide humanitarian aid, including aircraft with transport and airlift capabilities.

Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) is a...

13 February 2023 | Networks

Prosecutors charge six individuals for operating large DDoS services

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles and Alaska have charged six individuals for operating “leading DDoS-for-hire services”.

48 internet domains were seized as part of the operation. The FBI is currently seizing websites that allowed users to pay for DDoS services.

Some of the services were disguised as “stresser” services that authorised white hats could use for legitimate network testing against malicious attacks.

However, the FBI determined that...

15 December 2022 | Legislation & Government

Pro-Kremlin hackers attack EU Parliament website

Pro-Kremlin hacking group KILLNET has launched a “sophisticated” cyberattack on the EU Parliament website.

The attack was launched after the Parliament designated Russia a state sponsor of terrorism:

https://twitter.com/EP_President/status/1595443471518777345

Users were unable to access the Parliament’s website for a few hours and some parts were rendered inoperable. As of writing, access has been restored.

In a Telegram post, KILLNET claimed...

24 November 2022 | Security

Akamai halts a record-breaking DDoS in Europe

Akamai says that it halted what would have been a record-breaking distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack in Europe.

Another month comes another report of a would-be record DDoS. Last month, Cloudflare detailed a record-breaking DDoS attack that it thwarted in June. This time, it’s the turn of Akamai.

According to Akamai, an undisclosed company was hit by sustained traffic over a 30-day period. That traffic peaked on 21st July when the company was hit with 659.6...

1 August 2022 | Networks

Mantis botnet responsible for record-breaking Cloudflare attacks

A botnet called Mantis has been linked to record-breaking attacks targeting Cloudflare customers.

Last month, Cloudflare said that it successfully mitigated a record-breaking DDoS attack of 26 million requests per second. Just a couple of months earlier, Cloudflare reported that it mitigated a previous record-breaking attack of 15.3 million requests per second.

Mantis has now been linked to both attacks.

For the attacks, the majority of traffic originated from...

15 July 2022 | Security

Cloudflare mitigated a 15M requests-per-second DDoS

cloudflare cybersecurity cyber security ddos https

Cloudflare says that it successfully mitigated a huge 15.3 million requests-per-second DDoS attack.

The incident was the largest HTTPS attack that Cloudflare has seen. HTTPS attacks, Cloudflare notes, are “more expensive in terms of required computational resources because of the higher cost of establishing a secure TLS encrypted connection.”

Such attacks cost an attacker more to launch, and more for a victim to mitigate.

The target was a Cloudflare...

28 April 2022 | Networks

Five Eyes warn of Russian cyberattacks on critical infrastructure

A joint cybersecurity advisory issued by members of the Five Eyes alliance warns of increased attacks on critical infrastructure from Russia.

The Five Eyes alliance consists of the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Members cooperate in signals intelligence.

Canadian academic Srdjan Vucetic believes the Five Eyes’ originated from Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech in 1946, in which the British PM warned of open conflict with the Soviet Union unless the...

21 April 2022 | Legislation & Government

DDoS attacks ‘became larger and more complex’ in 2021

Data collected by F5 suggests that Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks became “larger and more complex” last year.

While the prevalence of DDoS attacks decreased slightly over the previous year, the severity of each occurrence “ramped up markedly” in 2021.

By Q4 2021, the mean DDoS attack was in excess of 21Gbps. That’s more than four times larger than the beginning of 2020.

Not only did last year result in a larger overall mean attack size;...

24 March 2022 | Networks