Hackers unleashed a complex attack on the internet over the weekend, using common devices such as webcams and digital recorders to cut access to some of the world's best known websites. The attack has already been called a "stunning breach of global internet stability." The FBI said it was investigating the cause of the cyberattack, which primarily targeted internet infrastructure company Dyn, whose service, Domain Name System or DNS, effectively connects users to websites by translating URLs into the numerical IP addresses for the servers that host sites. The distributed denial-of-service attack, known as DDoS, came in three waves and left millions of users, mostly in the United States and Europe, unable to access many popular websites, including PayPal, Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, HBO, Netflix, CNN, Reddit, Aribnb, The Guardian, CNN, and the New York Times. Israeli users also reported trouble accessing the websites struck. White House spokesman Josh Earnest described the attacks as "malicious." The Homeland Security Department said it was monitoring the situation, saying that at this point it had no concrete information about who may be behind the disruption. On Saturday, the attack was claimed by whistleblowing group WikiLeaks, which tweeted: "We ask supporters to stop taking down the U.S. internet. You proved your point." This claim of responsibility has yet to be corroborated by authorities. "The complexity of the attacks is what's making it very challenging for us," Dyn's Chief Strategy Officer Kyle York said. "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigations said they were investigating." A statement on Dyn's website said: "Starting at approximately 7:00 a.m. ET, Dyn began experiencing a DDoS attack. While it's not uncommon for Dyn's Network Operations Center (NOC) team to mitigate DDoS attacks, it quickly became clear that this attack was different. ... After restoring service, Dyn experienced a second wave of attacks just before noon ET. This second wave was more global in nature (i.e. not limited to our East Coast POPs), but was mitigated in just over an hour; service was restored at approximately 1:00 p.m. ET. ... News reports of a third attack wave were verified by Dyn based on our information. While there was a third attack attempted, we were able to successfully mitigate it without customer impact. "At this point we know this was a sophisticated, highly distributed attack involving tens of millions of IP addresses. We are conducting a thorough root cause and forensic analysis, and will report what we know in a responsible fashion. The nature and source of the attack is under investigation, but it was a sophisticated attack across multiple attack vectors and internet locations." Steve Grobman, chief technology officer at Intel Security, compared an outage at a domain name services company to tearing up a map or turning off a GPS before driving to a department store. "It doesn't matter that the store is fully open or operational if you have no idea how to get there," he said in a telephone interview. Security experts have recently expressed concern over the increasing power of denial-of-service attacks following high-profile electronic assaults against investigative journalist Brian Krebs and French internet service provider OVH. In a widely shared essay titled "Someone Is Learning How to Take Down the Internet," respected security expert Bruce Schneier said last month that major internet infrastructure companies were seeing a series of worrying denial-of-service attacks. Someone is extensively testing the core defensive capabilities of the companies that provide critical internet services, he said.
