Tag Archives: CloudFlare

Patch Tuesday, October 2023 Edition

October 10, 2023

Microsoft today issued security updates for more than 100 newly-discovered vulnerabilities in its Windows operating system and related software, including four flaws that are already being exploited. In addition, Apple recently released emergency updates to quash a pair of zero-day bugs in iOS.

How 1-Time Passcodes Became a Corporate Liability

August 30, 2022

Phishers are enjoying remarkable success using text messages to steal remote access credentials and one-time passcodes from employees at some of the world’s largest technology companies and customer support firms. A recent spate of SMS phishing attacks from one cybercriminal group has spawned a flurry of breach disclosures from affected companies, which are all struggling to combat the same lingering security threat: The ability of scammers to interact directly with employees through their mobile devices.

KrebsOnSecurity Hit By Huge New IoT Botnet “Meris”

September 10, 2021

On Thursday evening, KrebsOnSecurity was the subject of a rather massive (and mercifully brief) distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The assault came from “Meris,” the same new “Internet of Things” (IoT) botnet behind record-shattering attacks against Russian search giant Yandex this week and internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare earlier this summer.

Are the Days of “Booter” Services Numbered?

October 27, 2016

It may soon become easier for Internet service providers to anticipate and block certain types of online assaults launched by Web-based attack-for-hire services known as “booter” or “stresser” services, new research released today suggests.

Spreading the DDoS Disease and Selling the Cure

October 19, 2016

Earlier this month a hacker released the source code for Mirai, a malware strain that was used to launch a historically large 620 Gbps denial-of-service attack against this site in September. That attack came in apparent retribution for a story here which directly preceded the arrest of two Israeli men for allegedly running an online attack for hire service called vDOS. Turns out, the site where the Mirai source code was leaked had some very interesting things in common with the place vDOS called home.

Alleged vDOS Proprietors Arrested in Israel

September 10, 2016

Two young Israeli men alleged to be the co-owners of a popular online attack-for-hire service were reportedly arrested in Israel on Thursday. The pair were arrested around the same time that KrebsOnSecurity published a story naming them as the masterminds behind a service that can be hired to knock Web sites and Internet users offline with powerful blasts of junk data.

Inside ‘The Attack That Almost Broke the Internet’

August 26, 2016

In March 2013, a coalition of spammers and spam-friendly hosting firms pooled their resources to launch what would become the largest distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack the Internet had ever seen. The assault briefly knocked offline the world’s largest anti-spam organization, and caused a great deal of collateral damage to innocent bystanders in the process. Here’s a never-before-seen look at how that attack unfolded, and a rare glimpse into the shadowy cybercrime forces that orchestrated it.

Stress-Testing the Booter Services, Financially

August 17, 2015

The past few years have witnessed a rapid proliferation of cheap, Web-based services that troublemakers can hire to knock virtually any person or site offline for hours on end. Such services succeed partly because they’ve enabled users to pay for attacks with PayPal. But a collaborative effort by PayPal and security researchers has made it far more difficult for these services to transact with their would-be customers.