Eastern European org hit by second record-smashing DDoS attack

Akamai says it has absorbed the largest-ever publicly known distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack – an assault against an unfortunate Eastern European organization that went beyond 700 million packets per second. This latest tsunami of traffic hit on Monday, according to the web infrastructure biz, and we're told the …

[millep0]

nuclear?

'An old problem with potential to go nuclear'

If you mean 'big', better to say so than use 'nuclear' given the situation in Ukraine with the Russian threat of nuclear deployment, and NATO worries about escalation.

If on the other hand you really do mean 'nuclear' then you REALLY need to expand and explain that, given how close we are getting to nuclear war.

[diodesign]

We can use whatever words we want

You're not my real dad!

C.

[b0llchit]

Re: We can use whatever words we want

Now, now, my son. Don't get too excited. It is, after all, almost weekend and beer'o'clock.

[Charlie Clark]

Numbers

That the same organization is being targeted yet again with a record-breaking attack indicates a DDoS arms race is developing between the attacker and victim

Not so sure about that. For DDoS attackers rely mainly on the number of machines they control, the CDNs, however, have got better at detecting the attacks through the packet signatures are blackholing them quickly.

If you want an analogy with the war: Russia has thus far favoured massive bombardment over combined forces attacks, so much so that it has been using anti-aircraft (S300 and S400) missiles for the purpose. On the battlefield the 10:1 superiority was for a while indeed effectively if slowly grinding the Ukrainian defences down. Then they got MARS and HIMARS and started taking the depots and in some situations the artillery out, whereupon the lack of air defence due to repurposing became a real problem. The analogy isn't perfect but DDoS and bombardment both rely on quantity and are vulnerable to changes in strategy.

[Grinning Bandicoot]

Questions

This answers a question that I had posted a couple of weeks back. Now the next: DDoS can be considered a passive attack, sort of a minefield, what is in the works when more aggressive attacks take place and the effects rebound into some overarmed, under protected country? Are we going to India and Pakistan go at it again or Iran and Saudi Arabia. Taiwan defense system fed false data as a distraction for the US.

When you've retreated to your bunker and there is no where else - what?

[Version 1.0]

Re: Questions

When you've retreated to your bunker and there is no where else ...you have to have a plan for what you are going to eat and drink, and where you will pee.

These days events on the Internet are unfortunately normal, we just need to get used to the situation.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone ever notify the owners...

of the machines that are being used in the DDOS? Presumably most of them are NOT owned by the attackers, but are owned by legitimate users but have been compromised. Seems like letting them know they've been hacked would be A Good Thing.