Cyber-Attack Brings Internet to a Crawl
Cyber-attacks have been on the news a lot lately. The attacks have hit several large companies in the form of a DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service. A DDoS utilizes several computers to access the same website at the same time. If the router your company uses for your website is a 10Gbps (gigabyte per second) your site can handle 10 gigabytes per second of incoming traffic. If your site is receiving even 1 gigabyte per second more than what it can handle it slows traffic to a crawl, if not shutting the site down entirely. Eventually, there just isn’t enough room for a flow of data to continue. These attacks exploit the DNS or Domain Name System that acts as a telephone switchboard for the internet guiding users to the right site by translating the words like, “Facebook” and “Google” into the numerical language that computer servers understand.
In these cyber-attacks, sites are receiving as much as 300 GB/s, effectively shutting down the largest of sites. The slow down affects other sites too as the ‘traffic’ backs up. Security experts say that if these continual attacks get any worse that it could result in even basic internet services like email and online banking could be affected.
Some speculate that these slowdowns could be attributed to the ongoing feud between CyberBunker, a hosting company based in the Netherlands and Spamhaus an anti-spam group. Spamhaus claimed that one of the companies’ sites that CyberBunker was hosting was spamming so they blacklisted them. The resulting disagreement led to Spamhaus blacklisting CyberBunker itself. CyberBunker officials deny the charge about the spam.
After the accusation, Spamhaus’ servers were deluged by a cyber-attack of unprecedented levels. The attack was so severe that Google lent a hand to absorb the increase in traffic. Spamhaus blames CyberBunker and criminal gangs from Eastern Europe and Russia for the attack, CyberBunker denies they had anything to do with it. The incident is being investigated by five different cyber-police forces from around the world.
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