Online Attack Hits US Government Web Sites 199
angry tapir writes "A botnet composed of about 50,000 infected computers has been waging a war against US government Web sites and causing headaches for businesses in the US and South Korea. The attack started Saturday, and security experts have credited it with knocking the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC's) web site offline for parts of Monday and Tuesday. Several other government Web sites have also been targeted, including the Department of Transportation."
Re:blame China (Score:5, Insightful)
ok let's blame China now for this.
Let's not. See what offends me about this whole thing is that it's so obivious. If they'd just targeted America, it could have been anyone. But 'whoever' it was had to go and hit South Korea too, at the same time. Who hates both the US and South Korea?
By the way, don't say "Chinese Plot", they have nothing to gain from upping tensions at this point. They've been trying to bring the North Koreans into negotiations and they too have issued denounciations against NK by this point. Iran's official line is that the UK is mostly responsible for their problems, they have little to gain from doing something to the Americans and the Russians were just recently in negotiations with Obama that appear to have gone well.
Re:Counter attack (Score:3, Insightful)
The best defense is always a good offense. Why not launch an attack on North Korea? We have far more advanced technology and could probably cause more damage to them than they could cause to us. If we are crippling their systems, they won't be able to attack ours. I would love to see our government take off the gloves in the cyber world for a change rather than always invading everyone.
Since they started it, it would only be fair. However, there would definitely be some line about imperialist agression. Still, there's almost no chance they would escalate it to physical conflict. A shot above the bows would be nice for once. It might save us from having to drop the hammer when they finally go too far.
However, do they have enough internet connected infastructure to be worth hitting?
Re:Counter attack (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason the U.S. wouldn't attack North Korea in a cyber war is the same reason we wouldn't attack Iran. The internet is a far more powerful tool when it is use to sway opinion than it is to cripple systems.
Re:blame China (Score:5, Insightful)
What always bugs me with these "cyberwar" news is that people try to put one country as responsible for them, and its always China or Russia or one of the other "bad guys". Like parent post said, their goverments have no reason to do something like DDOS attacks against US. Who's to say its not just some individual who either is pissed at US/South Korea or has such political views, or does so for whatever reason? Stop blaming countries as a whole if you dont know it.
Re:Counter attack (Score:2, Insightful)
"Cyberwar" is a minor inconvenience, unless they DoS GPS and Satellite communications.
It's propaganda, PsyOp distraction from things that matter. If a bunch of government shovelware is unavailable for a few hours, really the folks who benefit are you and me. And the folks who thrive on theses "scares" by setting "Threat Levels".
You want to know what you should REALLY be worried about? Stuff like this:
http://colonelsabow.com/home.html [colonelsabow.com]
Who Cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but if this has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, apparently no one cares.
Re:blame China (Score:4, Insightful)
What always bugs me with these "cyberwar" news is that people try to put one country as responsible for them, and its always China or Russia or one of the other "bad guys". Like parent post said, their goverments have no reason to do something like DDOS attacks against US. Who's to say its not just some individual who either is pissed at US/South Korea or has such political views, or does so for whatever reason? Stop blaming countries as a whole if you dont know it.
But there's two things that are important here..
1. An individual would have to be VERY motivated to attack two countries at once. Especially if those countries are the US and South Korea. The only thing that makes them unique is that they're at war with North Korea. We also know for a fact that the North Korean citizen does not have internet access from reporters inside the country, in fact posessing a device that can access the outside is punishable by death there so it can't have been a NK citizen acting alone. Assuming it was just one citizen from another country they would have to be very dedicated to perform what is basically a military strike against a foreign power. Prepared to risk death to frame North Korea; that would be a very unique combination and it makes little sense.
2. North Korea has recently been upping it's cyberwar capability enough for it to show up in overseas media. They only recently sent teams to participate in international hacking challanges and appear to have done well in them. One of the main reasons I instantly suspected NK is because of this.
So my personal suspicion is based on the fact that they've recently been working hard to build up their capability in this field despite having no internet connectivity for the average citizen and then all of a sudden a cyber strike hits North Korea's enemies at the same time they're conducting missile tests in contravention of UN sanctions.
How do you know they went down? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if google [google.com], wiki [wikipedia.org], or itunes [apple.com] goes down, then PANIC!
Re:Counter attack (Score:4, Insightful)
Other than Lil Kim's xbox, how much is there to attack?
Seriously, NK is dirt poor and supremely paranoid. It's not like their economy depends on the internet in any way.
And if you attack their military computers then you quickly escalate things to a very dangerous level.
Re:Pull the Gdamn plug! (Score:4, Insightful)
Although this might help against some types of denial of service attempt where they're making your machine work harder by servicing what look to be legitimate requests, it does not help against attempts at network saturation from incoming packets unless you can block it at the upstream router.
Re:Internet Sovereignty (Score:4, Insightful)
If China gave us clearance to attack North Korea, I would hope that we would start by blowing up the government (using air power). I think the people would get the idea pretty quickly, so I'm not sure a deadly ground war would follow.
Yes, because that worked so well in Iraq [wikipedia.org].
Re:blame China (Score:4, Insightful)
And lets get some perceptive here. A few website went down for less than a day. Hardly an attack that anyone should care about. And not national security or military level either.
Really a DDOS attack like this, *is* a small thing.
Re:Aiding and abetting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes you can say the car was stolen. There are parts of the country that don't lock their doors and leave keys in there ignition. Thats a good thing, it says people are relatively honest in those parts. Should you suddenly be an accomplis a theft if someone steals your car. I think not unless you hand them the key and say steal it. And no leaving your keys in the ignition is Not handing to them, its showing some amount of trust. That justification is a spin done by theives to justify their actions. Well they left the door open so they were handing my their silverware, or she did not have a chastity belt on so its her fault. All that is spin and should be avoided. Computers that come off the shelf in stores should not be hijacked. Consumers should not be responsible for someone coming into their home and stealing use of their computers. Its a crime, and should be thought of as such and systems should be strengthened for protection and investigation and prosecutions done to find and punish this type of crime.
Re:US Government websites attacked... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pull the Gdamn plug! (Score:3, Insightful)
unless you can block it at the upstream router.
Yes - we need to block at the upstream router. This is why the ISP who connects the bot to the net has to become proactive and stop burying their collective heads in the sand.
We all know who these ISP's are too. They tend to be the big boys.
The thing is that they can even write into their terms of service that the customer _agrees_ to a reasonable fee to correct zombie machines. Then they can make money on the "service" they provide.
OTOH... let me advise of how NOT to do things.
My lawyers in the past have had flocks of computers connected to the net. They did NOT have competent systems support personnel. They were charging me over $250 per hour. A competent consulting systems admin does not typically charge anywhere near that much.
Quite literally for a PITTANCE of what they charge their clients they could have technical backup and support. I shuddered to think my files and communications which were suppose to be confidential were sitting in those computers because I am certain that its not much different than putting them in an unlocked filing cabinate in the middle of a dark parking lot with a sign on the side that says in large bold florescent letters: Confidential, Please don't read!
People justify their sloppiness in many ways.
I stopped in a Pawn Shop one day and spotted a Quantum DLT7000. This was for $25 bux. So I bought it. Inside I found a tape. These tapes are worth close to $25 bux. I wondered: Why would ha pawn shop have a DLT7000? Most people don't even know what it is.
So I read the tape. The first file was a web site. The next files were the backup data off a windows NT system. That system was owned by an accountant and I got her name and phone number because it was on each of her clients' tax returns which were also on the tape. With little difficulty one could lift these files and drop then into the software she used to prepare the returns. BTW - that software was _also_ on the tape of course.
Note this however: At DTL7000 holds 70 GB of data. I copied everything onto a couple CDs. So the computer store in question sold her a DLT7000 which requires a SCSI interface and special backup software and so forth and cost about $4000 when she bought it. They could have sold her an optical drive for a few $100.
So we see: incompetence at the sales level. incompetence at the user level, incompetence at the disposal level. Tax returns sitting in a pawn shop.
Also when I called her up to ask if the tape drive had been stolen she gave me a hard time. Of course I know where she lives. She's one of my neighbors. Her address was in the tax returns as well. This explains why she happened to tote the drive down to the particular pawn shop which is within a small radius of where I live.
Arrghh!
I swear that when I need to do business with the "professionals" who "serve" the general public that I cringe.
Re:Pull the Gdamn plug! (Score:3, Insightful)
I cannot think of one legitimate case where spoofed IPs is legitimate.
Re:Internet Sovereignty (Score:2, Insightful)