SafeUM
Home Blog Services Download Help About Recharge

Axarhöfði 14, 110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015
SafeUM
Blog
Services
Download
Help
About
Recharge
Menu
Archive
TOP Security!
14 Nov 2014

New DNS amplification attacks use text from White House press release

Cybercriminals have started a new trend for conducting distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and rely on a type of DNS (Domain Name System) amplification that leverages text records for making the operation more effective; in some campaigns, parts of a press release from the White House have been observed by researchers.

The tactic is not new, but more and more incidents of this sort have been recorded by the PLXsert (Prolexic Security Engineering and Research Team) of Akamai, which observed it in an October 4 incident.

The entertainment sector is the most targeted. “Attackers have used large TXT records in reflection attacks in the past. Previous victims of DNS amplification attacks using TXT records include sites such as isc.org and many .gov sites. With this new threat, malicious actors are now crafting the TXT records to provide the largest response size possible, thereby having as much impact as possible,” a report from the researchers informs.

A DDoS attack is designed to bring a service down by delivering a large amount of requests to its server. When the information can no longer be processed, the machine can no longer do its job. According to PLXsert, the most targeted entities are from the entertainment (75%), education (12.5%), and high tech consulting (12.5%) sectors. The snippets of the official text originate from the guessinfosys.com domain, and are used in what is called a DDoS reflected attack. Cybercriminals often use intermediate victims to reflect the bad traffic to their target.

Largest incident lasted for more than 15 hours

In the observed incidents, the systems from PLXsert revealed that DDoS attacks leveraging the DNS TXT amplification technique was involved in longer-lasting events (more than five hours), with the most serious such event peaking at over 15 hours. The statistics gathered from the incidents show that the source port used for the attacks is 53, while the targeted one is 80, but it can also be a random one.

A DNS amplified DDoS incident relies on sending a request to a server from the spoofed IP address of the victim. Thus, when the server returns the response, which is larger than the initial request, the packets are sent to the victim, causing a denial-of-service condition. It appears that the peak bandwidth was recorded by PLXsert at 4.3 Gbps. Researchers say that using an access control list (ACL) should be a good form of defense, but only if there is more bandwidth than the attack can generate.

Tags:
USA DDoS hackers DNS fraud
Source:
Softpedia
1925
Other NEWS
3 Jul 2020 safeum news imgage An encrypted messaging service has been infiltrated by police
4 May 2020 safeum news imgage Two-Factor Authentication ​What Is It and Why You Should Use It
12 Dec 2019 safeum news imgage Encryption is under threat - this is how it affects you
4 Nov 2019 safeum news imgage Should Big Decisions Be Based on Data or Your Intuition?
7 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage VPNFilter malware infecting 500,000 devices is worse than we thought
4 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Hackers target Booking.com in criminal bid to steal hundreds of thousands from customers
1 Jun 2018 safeum news imgage Operator of World's Top Internet Hub Sues German Spy Agency
30 May 2018 safeum news imgage US says North Korea behind malware attacks
29 May 2018 safeum news imgage Facebook and Google targeted as first GDPR complaints filed
25 May 2018 safeum news imgage A new reason to not buy these cheap Android devices
24 May 2018 safeum news imgage Flaws in smart pet devices, apps could come back to bite owners
23 May 2018 safeum news imgage Google sued for 'clandestine tracking' of 4.4m UK iPhone users' browsing data
21 May 2018 safeum news imgage LocationSmart reportedly leaked phone location data onto the web
18 May 2018 safeum news imgage The SEC created its own scammy ICO to teach investors a lesson
17 May 2018 safeum news imgage Thieves suck millions out of Mexican banks in transfer heist
All news
SafeUM
Confidential Terms of Use Our technologies Company
Follow us
Download
SafeUM © Safe Universal Messenger

Axarhöfði 14,
110 Reykjavik, Iceland

Iceland - 2015