A Third of the Internet is Under Attack

[DooKey]

Study by San Diego Supercomputer Center’s CAIDA (Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis) group finds millions of network addresses subjected to denial-of-service attacks over two-year period. According to the study the scale of the attacks is much larger than anyone thought. The internet was targeted by nearly 30,000 attacks per day. That said, one of the researchers added she’s worried these statistics are likely “an under-estimation of reality.” It's truly unbelievable the steps others will take to ruin a good thing. Read the study here.

Although the study does not address the causes for the well-recognized rise in DoS attacks in recent years, in an interview the researchers noted several strong possibilities including: cyber-extortion, cyber-crime, cyber-warfare, political protest aimed at governments, censorship from authoritative regimes, attacks relating to on-line gaming (e.g. to gain a competitive advantage), school kids who may attack to avoid taking an exam, and disgruntled former employees.

 

[viper1152012]

I blame trolls.....because y not?

 

[Esso]

But it makes for fun mapping tools, pew pew pew: http://map.norsecorp.com/ , http://www.digitalattackmap.com/

 

[PaulP]

Mostly enabled by lame ass security and people who just don't care enough to fix it.

 

[lcpiper]

Mostly enabled by lame ass security and people who just don't care enough to fix it.

Too a very great degree yes. If over half the world wasn't still on XP, the picture would certainly look different.

Take this article today on NBC news;
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/why-white-house-searching-leakers-instead-hackers-ncna817396

The author spends most of the article explaining how the NSA is either the cause or the enabler of numerous data breaches or global hacking successes claiming that hacking is the problem. But the cause wasn't by hacks, the NSA tools weren't hacked, they were stollen by an insider, just like Snowden who they talk about was an insider. The root cause of all of this was insiders, leakers. That the stolen tools target WinXP systems is a simple function that the majority of the world still has many many WinXP system in use, so write the tools for your target. That they are being used still by hackers is again for the same reasons. That many of the vulnerabilities are not being reported is again for the same reason, they are for the most part, vulnerabilities that effect older unpatched systems and not a threat to most US users or government systems.

None of these countries would be prime intelligence targets would they?

• China - 54.79%
• Cook Islands - 72.14%
• Cuba - 52.93%
• Eritrea - 58.25%
• North Korea - 61.47%
• Morocco - 44.66%
• Norfolk Island - 70.18%
• Vietnam - 44.33%

https://www.neowin.net/news/statcou...st-used-os-in-eight-countries-including-china

And BTW, many scans that report XP as an OS in use are false positives, for instance, my NetApp systems produce false positives and show up as Win2000 server systems because the file sharing protocol, CIFS, emulates Win2000 file sharing. But it's not Win2000 and it isn't vulnerable despite the scan's claim.

This author is claiming the White House shouldn't try to shut down leaks, but everything this author is famous for writing came about because of leakers. No self interest here at all is there?

The White House's Leak Hunt Is Battling the Wrong Enemy With the Wrong Weapons

Trump should fire the NSA officials in charge when hacking tools go missing.

by James Bamford / Nov.05.2017 / 8:19 AM ET

.................snip...................

James Bamford is author of “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America” and “The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America’s Most Secret Agency.”

No self-interest at all, at least it's an opinion piece, he's got a right to those.