Political denial-of-service attacks on the rise
The cases of Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008 illustrate how dedicated denial-of-service attacks can nearly paralyze a country; trouble is, now attackers can purchase tools such as Black Energy or NetBot Attacker, made by Russian and Chinese hackers, respectively, for less than $100 a piece
We wrote about how, during last summer war between Russia and Georgia, an army of PCs controlled by hackers with strong ties to Russian hacking groups flooded Georgian sites with dummy requests, making it near impossible for them to respond to legitimate traffic. At times, the attacks directed 800 megabits of data per second at a targeted website (see 20 December 2008 HS Daily Wire).
Technology Review’s Erica Naone quotes Jose Nazario, manager of security research for Arbor Networks, to say that this type of politically motivated Internet attack is becoming increasingly common. “The problem is sweeping and has changed over the years,” Nazario said during a presentation at the security conference SOURCE Boston. He noted that the frequency of these attacks and the number of targets being hit have grown steadily over the past few years.
Nazario says that the bar for launching a DDoS attack has come down significantly in the past few years. Attacks aimed at Estonian sites in 2007 used botnets and scripts that weren’t easy for nontechnical people to employ. Naone writes that now attackers can purchase tools such as Black Energy or NetBot Attacker, made by Russian and Chinese hackers, respectively, for less than $100 apiece. These kits give an attacker ready-made code and an easy-to-use interface to control a botnet. Attackers have even developed Web interfaces so that volunteers can more easily participate in an attack. Attacks are often coordinated in forums, Nazario says, and easy-to-use interfaces help boost participation.
Steven Bellovin, a professor of computer science at Columbia University who researches network security, agrees that politically motivated DDoS attacks are becoming more common. He says the reason is that they are becoming easier to launch and more effective. “You can’t launch a DDoS attack against an enemy who isn’t dependent on the Net,” Bellovin says. “You also can’t launch one unless you have adequate network resources.”
Nazario says that denial-of-service attacks can be serious, but he adds that it is important to keep them in perspective in the context of warfare. “It doesn’t compare to people dying on the ground,” he says.
