Tag Archive for: blue

Out of the blue: Surviving an 18-hour, 39M-request DDoS attack

/in


No online business can afford to neglect malicious bot threats. Attackers and fraudsters increasingly leverage bots to automate and coordinate attacks, driving IT teams and ill-equipped security tools to their limits.

surviving DDoS attack

Only a full-endpoint, 360° bot protection solution that leverages aggregate global detection signals can save you from unexpected threats.

Case in point: A large e-commerce website protected by DataDome’s bot and online fraud management solution recently remained blissfully unaffected throughout a high volume, highly-distributed DDoS attack. What’s more, the site implemented the protection to solve a scraping problem.

Let’s deep dive into a real-life attack to understand the key traits of a DDoS attack, how the threat landscape is evolving, and the implications when choosing a security solution.

The attack, as it happened

Beginning on a Friday and lasting through Saturday, the DDoS attack came in several waves spanning over 18 hours. In total, the site was under active attack for ~4 hours.

The attack can be split into two main waves:

  • 1st wave: Friday night between ~18:00 and ~0:00 (CEST).
  • 2nd wave: Saturday morning from ~10:00 to 12:00.

DataDome

The first part of the attack represented the highest volume of traffic (29.375 million bot requests). During this first wave, the DDoS generated spikes of traffic that reached up to 1.5 million requests per minute.

surviving DDoS attack

The attack, like most DDoS attacks these days, was heavily distributed. The attacker leveraged a botnet of more than 11,000 distinct IP addresses from 1,500 different autonomous systems, spread over 138 countries.

The point: Simple IP rate limiting or geo-blocking would not have been effective.

The targeted website has customers all around the world. So, while blocking all requests from certain countries could have helped mitigate the attack, it would have also impacted the user experience for innocent customers based in the blocked countries.

If we look at the distinct number of IP addresses used by the botnet in the timeline, we see that during each spike, the botnet was making requests from more than 5,000 different IP addresses.

IP addresses

Requests came from all around the world, in particular from the US…

Source…

Florida Blue increases local investments in food security programs to more than $16 million

/in


Florida Blue Foundation awards additional $3.73 million in grants to innovative community programs making a meaningful impact in fight against hunger and food insecurity

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Oct. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — An estimated 2.2 million Floridians lack access to healthy food, including just over 660,000 children, according to Feeding America. Today, the Florida Blue Foundation announced another major investment to address food insecurity in the state with $3.73 million in grants awarded to 10 community-based programs.

The latest funding brings the total investment in food security programs from Florida Blue and its Foundation to more than $16 million over the last four years.

“Healthy communities need healthy food. When people don’t have enough food or must choose inexpensive foods with little nutritional value, it can seriously impact their health and well-being. Each year, more than $4.2 billion in health care costs are associated with food insecurity in our state,” said Pat Geraghty, Florida Blue and GuideWell president and CEO.

“The rising cost of food has only made this issue worse for our state. Florida Blue is focused on ensuring every person in Florida has reliable and affordable access to nutritious food and the knowledge of how to make it an enjoyable part of their daily lives,” said Geraghty 

The 10 nonprofit organizations receiving the latest $3.73 million in funding from the Florida Blue Foundation will use the grants for community-based food security initiatives that not only provide access to nutritional food but address obstacles to food security in their communities.

“Food insecurity is a highly complex issue. Each community’s relationship and access to food is unique. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to this issue,” said Susan Towler, executive director of the Florida Blue Foundation. “These Florida Blue Foundation grants will fund programs that directly improve access to and quality of food security for people at the neighborhood level, particularly in communities with underserved, racial and ethnic minorities, and low-income populations. We selected these 10 organizations because we believe they can make a meaningful and lasting impact in…

Source…

NIMASA Acquires Mobile Assets to Boost Blue Project Security

/in


By Adedapo Adesanya

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has foiled attempts by suspected drug traffickers to export parcels of Methamphetamine popularly called Mkpuru Mmiri locally concealed in Cornflakes packs and body cream containers to Malaysia and Australia at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, and a courier company in Lagos.

The drug control authority said two freight agents; Mr Nneji Anoma And Mr Etoh Barnabas were involved in the bid to export nine parcels of Methamphetamine weighing 1.45kg hidden in packs of cornflakes to Malaysia through the NAHCO export shed of the MMIA on Wednesday, June 15, 2022, have been arrested.

Another consignment of 10 cartons of Tramadol 225mg packaged as Tramaking containing 500,000 tablets with a total weight of 407kg and an estimated street value of N200 million have been seized during a joint examination with the customs at the NCS warehouse.

The consignment, which had arrived SAHCO import shed since June 6, from India via Ethiopian Airline, was eventually transferred to the NDLEA by customs on Wednesday, June 15.

The previous day, Tuesday, June 14, a similar joint examination with customs at its enforcement terminal, Tincan seaport, Lagos led to the seizure of 33 parcels of cannabis indica (Colorado) weighing 16.5kgs. The drug exhibit was recovered from a 40-foot container, TRHU 7874497 containing four vehicles. The cannabis coming from Montreal, Canada was discovered in three out of the four vehicles in the container.

In the same vein, operatives of the Directorate of Operations and General Investigation, DOGI at the agency attached to a courier company have intercepted a kilogram of Methamphetamine concealed in body cream containers heading to Australia.

Meanwhile, the drug cartels also suffered losses in other operations across Adamawa, Borno, Kogi, Ogun, Zamfara and Taraba States. A suspected drug dealer, Mr Abdullahi Musa, a.k.a Yerima Uding wanted for some past attacks on officers and men of the agency, was in the early hours of Thursday, June 16 arrested in Hong town, Adamawa state.

The 53-year-old suspect was caught with 57 blocks of compressed cannabis sativa, concealed in the boot of his…

Source…

Twitter pauses its verification program rollout after giving fake accounts blue checks

/in


Twitter is halting the expansion of its verification program, saying it needs to work on the application and review process that lets people into the blue check mark club. This change, where Twitter won’t be letting new people apply for verification, is coming after Twitter admitted that several fake accounts, which reportedly seemed to be part of a botnet, were incorrectly verified.

If you’ve recently applied for verification, there is a chance you’ll get it — Twitter Verified has said that it’ll still be reviewing existing applications, so the freeze is just preventing new people from being able to apply. In other words, if you were able to apply before, Twitter’s lead says you still can. Twitter hasn’t indicated that it’ll be making changes to the criteria that it uses to deem accounts as verifiable or not. A Twitter spokesperson told The Verge that it would “resume rolling out applications in the next few weeks.”

This isn’t the first time Twitter has paused its verification program — it put the public process on hold in 2017, after it received backlash for verifying one of the organizers behind the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville. It brought back a revamped version in 2021 — and paused it a week later due to an avalanche of requests.

The start-stop issues Twitter has been having with its Verified program speak to the difficulties that can come with issuing a badge that is sometimes regarded by users as an endorsement. Twitter says that the purpose of the badge is to show that an account is “authentic, notable, and active,” but even those criteria can end up courting controversy when people who are arguably notable get their applications rejected (especially when obviously fake accounts make it through).

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Twitter was halting applications. We regret…

Source…