Survival Gear

Internet Hit by Largest Cyber Attack Ever: A Sign of Things to Come

Cyber AttackFor the last week, the internet has been hit by one of the largest distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) in the history of the internet.

The attack started after the spam filtering company Spamhaus added Cyberbunker, a secretive internet hosting company that’s taken heat for hosting spammers, to its internet blacklist. Spamhaus claims that Cyberbunker, in partnership with Russian crime syndicates, started a large-scale DDoS attack on its servers.

What started as a fight between two companies has turned into what’s being called the largest cyber-attack “in the history of the Internet”, causing widespread congestion and jamming critical infrastructure around the world. Companies like Netflix, CloudFlare and Google have all reportedly been affected by the massive attack, and experts are warning it could start to affect critical infrastructure and even bring down a government’s Internet infrastructure.

The attack, which is now starting to affect massive areas of the internet, has exposed major vulnerabilities in the Internet’s core infrastructure.

A DDoS attack is one where a large influx of data packets is sent to overload internet servers, denying access to websites that are on that specific server. While most denial-of-service attacks usually only affect a small number of networks, this attack targeted the internet’s Domain Name System, highlighting a major vulnerability that threatens the entire internet.

The attack is the largest DDoS attack to date, and is sending a data stream of 300 billion bits per second. Experts are warning that this attack, or one like it, could literally bring the internet to its knees. Critical systems, banking, government infrastructure and even email could all be affected or taken down by an attack like this.

Obama Administration set to Take Pre-emptive Action Against Cyber Threats

According to the New York Times, The Obama administration is taking cyber security very seriously, so much so that they have just concluded a secret legal review of the administration’s new cyber war guidelines. The New Cyber guidelines include launching pre-emptive cyber strikes if the United States detects credible evidence of a major cyber attack.

It’s only a matter of time….

Damon Petraglia, a Cyber-Terrorism expert and member of US Secret Service Electronic Crimes Task Force, told us in an article a couple of months back, “Our Infrastructure is very vulnerable to attack.” He went on to talk about how most of our critical infrastructure in some way can be affected by these types of cyber-attacks.

The threat is very real, and the threat is growing every day. Just last week we reported on what some are saying was a cyber-attack on the Chase banking systems that temporarily caused customers’ to think their bank accounts had been wiped out.  For hours, Chase customers’ accounts showed a balance of zero dollars, causing many of them to be unable to withdraw money from their accounts.

According to Petraglia, “We are under attack 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Our military systems are probed in excess of hundreds of thousands of times per hour. Our private industry can claim similar statistics.” He went on to warn that people need to prepare themselves for these very real threats, and take steps that would be similar to “preparing for an extended period without adequate food and water supplies and access to emergency services.”

13 Comments on Internet Hit by Largest Cyber Attack Ever: A Sign of Things to Come

  1. church

    da da dat thats all folks…..and its illegal to prep……

  2. dawn

    After to talking about this with a few others, I realized that a lot of people think the only problems that will come from this are silly little things, like oh boohoo I can’t check my Facebook or emails for a while, but it really means so much more than that. Just look at how many people rely on this for day-to-day life. How many of those people could really hack it in the big bad world without these things? We’re not talking like a weekend camping trip, but an indefinite amount of time, and sadly, most people couldn’t handle it. That’s one of the most dangerous things about it: fear. When large amounts of people get scared, they also get very stupid, and therefore extremely dangerous.

    • Off Grid Survival

      Most people don’t realize how interconnected all of these systems are, and how these cyber threats can easily cripple much more than just email and facebook.

      Commerce, critical infrastructure, delivery systems, transportation and financial systems are all incredibly vulnerable to attack. If any of these get taken down, people are going to start freaking out.

      • church

        And you are correct the banking system transportation the whole marketing system..shipping an recieveing all of it will fold if you are not prepared you will be doing with out……open your eyes people….its coming down the pipe

  3. Eric

    Just this week our phone lines at our office were out, for the most part, for 3 days. We managed to forward lines to cell phones to take calls, but what we couldn’t do was deposit visa/mastercard payments because our system has to dial out to do that! Now my bank account is negative because I’ve got 3 days of deposits that won’t show up til Friday. People really don’t understand the domino effect these kinds of systems can have on each other.

    • SNIPER

      I have had the same problem, as the GM for a dealership, most people have no clue of the effect this wil have on buisness. I have solved the credit cards problem with an attachment for my cell phone that allows the card to be wipped,,,Radio Shack.

  4. Peter

    If the internet went down we would be crippled. All you unprepared people would be in a big mess especially if you live in the city.

    It would appear that although the internet is a great invention we are too dependent on it.

    • Josj

      Agree! Look at all the mindless morons who can’t go five minutes without being attached to there I-fillintheblank

  5. Draqwraith

    You guys are missing a fact. DDoS is called distributed denial of service attack. Meaning more than one PC inflected with a virus allowing it to be controlled remotely and sends these packets. Your phone service was not taken out by these attacks, its pretty pin point who is getting attacked.

  6. boogoo

    I spoke with a well to do CEO of a Swiss bank some years ago who has all his money OUT of the system and said people have NO IDEA how fragile the system is. QUOTE “If the internet goes down for 3 days..The entire world economy will collapse” his words not mine and he is NO FOOL!

    • Josj

      If people realized how insecure these banking networks really are, they would never put another dime into the system.

    • BankVault

      I actually worked in the IT field in banking for a number of years and I can attest to the fact that these banking systems are not the least bit secure. They are penetrated almost daily and the money that is lost is covered up to make the system seem secure. They know if it ever got out it would crash the system.

  7. hawkeyes

    I am amazed. Are there really some people waking up and realizing that the toys that they were suckered into buying are really devices to suck their money out of their banks and their computer might be one that is helping to do this?? Wow. And I thought the average Joe had turned into a useless wad of slime.

    hawkeyes – one without a degenerate “smart phone”

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