East Coast Hacking Vendetta

I blogged this morning and logged onto Twitter no problem, but then not too long later no dice.

I couldn't access the site, and I saw the news of the massive DDoS attack.

And now, at Bloomnberg, "The Possible Vendetta Behind the East Coast Web Slowdown" (via Memeorandum):

Millions of internet users lost access to some of the world’s most popular websites Friday, as hackers hammered servers along the U.S. East Coast with phony traffic until they crashed, then moved westward.
A global attack on one provider of Domain Name System services, Dyn Inc., took down sites including Twitter, Spotify, Reddit, CNN, Etsy and The New York Times for long stretches of time -- from New York to Los Angeles.

Kyle York, chief strategy officer of Dyn, said the hackers launched a so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack using “tens of millions” of malware-infected devices connected to the internet. Speaking during a conference call Friday afternoon, York said Dyn was “actively” dealing with a “third wave” of the attack.

By Friday evening, Dyn said it had stopped the hacks. "As you can imagine it has been a crazy day," Dyn spokesman Adam Coughlin wrote in an e-mail. "At this moment (knock on wood) service has been restored."

Security professionals have been anticipating a rise in attacks coming from malware that targets the "Internet of Things," a new breed of small gadgets that are connected to the internet. That was after a hacker released software code that powers such malware, called Mirai, several weeks ago.

Gillian M. Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the agency and the FBI are aware of the incidents and “investigating all potential causes.”

Keep reading.