The world of internet was under attack on Friday after hackers were able to cripple major internet service including Twitter, Spotify and Amazon, is believed is believed to have been orchestrated using common home devices like webcams and digital recorders.
The websites i.e. Twitter, Spotify, and Reddit were among the sites taken offline, and it is learnt that these entire internet services were customers of company called Dyn, which was the target of the attack, reported BBC.
The company, Dyn, is a DNS or Domain Name System service provider, said it began experiencing what security experts called a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. While, reports emerged that many sites were inaccessible started on the East Coast, but as the time passed the problem spread westward, reported the New York Times.
The security analysts are of the opinion that attack was carried on using the “internet of things” – web-connected home devices.
Hackers used some thousands of these internet-connected devices that had previously been infected with a malicious code to carry on a DDoS attack. Many of the devices involved were of Chinese origin, having easy-to-guess usernames and passwords.
“Mirai scours the Web for IoT (Internet of Things) devices protected by little more than factory-default usernames and passwords,” explained cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs, “and then enlists the devices in attacks that hurl junk traffic at an online target until it can no longer accommodate legitimate visitors or users.”
