We were under attack- said the New York Times in today’s edition, based on users’ reported sporadic problems reaching several websites including Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, Airbnb, Reddit, Etsy, SoundCloud and The New York Times.
Reports from Dyn, a company that servers to monitor and reroute internet traffic said that they experienced a DDOS attack just after 7:00 a.m. Friday morning. Some users reported inaccessible sites from East Coast and it spread westward in three separate waves until evening hours.
Other reports associated to this incident mentioned that the attack appears to have relied on hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices like cameras, baby monitors and home routers that have been infected and here is the kicker, without their owner’s knowledge, allegedly with software that allows a hackers to commend them to flood a target with overwhelming traffic.
Kyle York, Dyn’s chief strategist, said in this article that others that host the core parts of the internet’s infrastructure were targets for a growing number of more powerful attacks, and “the number and types of attacks, the duration of attacks and complexity of these attacks are all on the rise,” Mr. York said this morning.
This DDOS attacks affected some of the Temple University websites.
According to initial reports, hackers exploited the vulnerability of “internet of things devices” to launch multiple waves of recent DDoS attacks. These devices are labeled “smart home devices,” but perhaps not so smart after all when it comes to cyber security. Strong security technology and methods must be developed for the “internet of things” too .