Many internet users have woken up to find that access to some of their favourite services has been limited or interrupted. Â
What's happening?
A large, ongoing denial of service attack affecting well-known companies like Twitter, Reddit, PayPal and Spotify. Criminal hackers have found a way to use the web-enabled computers found in household devices like digital recorders and webcams in botnets, or remotely controlled networks sending malicious emails, to stage DDOS attacks.
How did it begin?
It began on Friday morning in the US, when Dyn, a company that provides domain name services to these familiar internet brands, was reportedly being hit by a globally distributed-denial-of-service attack. The attack created delays and disruptions for customers in the US, Europe and Asia. There are reports of continuing outages.
What's different about this DDOS attack?
DDOS are events in which masses of data are directed to overwhelm a company's computer networks, either shutting them down and slowing their function. DDOS attacks can be thought of as having someone park a bus in your driveway, making it impossible to come and go or conduct regular business.Â
US-based security researcher Brian Krebs, who has reported extensively on this trend, notes hackers have recently increased the scale and intensity of DDOS attacks. They have also created a new type of botnet called Mirai which taps the computers on household devices (also known as 'the internet of things') at a large scale to conduct these attacks. It's thought that criminal hackers typically use Mirai rather than (so far) nation states.
Is WikiLeaks involved?
Despite a tweet referencing the attack, it looks unlikely WikiLeaks has been involved. However, WikiLeaks has been in the news recently both for the organisation's role in disseminating hacked US election information and also for the fact that Julian Assange's hosts at the Ecuadorian embassy in London restricted his web access. So in the minds of some internet users, there is a connection to be made.