Aug 19 2021

Great Firewall Ready to Unleash ‘Gigantic’ DDoS—so are Other Middleboxes

Category: DDoS,Information SecurityDISC @ 12:51 pm

Researchers have disclosed a nasty new way for bad people to mess up the internet for the rest of us. They’ve found a fantastically powerful reflective-amplification attack technique that could easily be used for distributed denial of service (DDoS).

You’ll be pleased to know the researchers haven’t wasted their time dreaming up a fancy name or a logo. On the other hand, they’re far from hopeful that the problems can be fixed.

Nation-states would have to fix their firewalls, which ain’t gonna happen. In today’s SB Blogwatch, this is why we can’t have nice things.

Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment.

‘Infinite’ Amplification Ahoy

What’s the craic? Catalin Cimpanu reports—“Firewalls and middleboxes can be weaponized for gigantic DDoS attacks”:

Weaponizing this attack is relatively simple”
Academics said they discovered a way to abuse the TCP protocol, firewalls, and other network middleboxes to launch giant distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. 
 The research is the first of its kind to describe a method to carry out DDoS reflective amplification attacks via the TCP protocol, previously thought to be unusable for such operations.


Reflective amplification 
 happens when an attacker sends network packets to a third-party server on the internet, the server processes and creates a much larger response packet, which it then sends to a victim instead of the attacker. 
 The amplification factor for these TCP-based attacks is also far larger than UDP protocols, making TCP protocol abuse one of the most dangerous forms of 
 DDoS.


The flaw they found was in the design of middleboxes, which are equipment installed inside large organizations that inspect network traffic. 
 If the attacker tried to access a forbidden website, then the middlebox would respond with a “block page,” which would typically be much larger than the initial packet—hence an amplification effect. 
 Weaponizing this attack is relatively simple.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks: Classification, Attacks, Challenges and Countermeasures

Tags: 800Gbps ransom DDoS, DDoS D/TLS, Gigantic DDoS, Great Firewall


Apr 01 2021

Akamai dealt with an 800Gbps ransom DDoS against a gambling company

Category: DDoSDISC @ 12:31 pm

CDN and cybersecurity firm Akamai warns of a worrying escalation in ransom DDoS attacks since the beginning of the year.

The company recently mitigated three of the six biggest volumetric DDoS attacks it has ever dealt, two of which were ransom DDoS attacks.

One of these two ransom DDoS attacks targeted a gambling company in Europe and peaked at 800Gbps, but the most worrisome aspect of the attack was its sophistication.

According to the company, the rise of the Bitcoin price is motivating the cybercriminals in intensifying their efforts and their attack bandwidth to carry out powerful attacks with extortion purposes.

“The most recent extortion attack — peaking at more than 800 Gbps and targeting a European gambling company — was the biggest and most complex we’ve seen since the widespread return of extortion attacks that kicked off in mid-August 2020. Since the start of the campaign, show-of-force attacks have grown from 200+ Gbps in August to 500+ Gbps by mid-September, then ballooned to 800+ Gbps by February 2021.” reads the analysis published by Akamai. “But the size of the extortion attack wasn’t the only notable characteristic of the actors’ modus operandi.”

Tags: 800Gbps ransom DDoS