Tag Archive for: Huge

KrebsOnSecurity Hit By Huge New IoT Botnet “Meris” – Krebs on Security

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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 botnet behind record-shattering attacks against Russian search giant Yandex this week and internet infrastructure firm Cloudflare earlier this summer.

Cloudflare recently wrote about its attack, which clocked in at 17.2 million bogus requests-per-second. To put that in perspective, Cloudflare serves over 25 million HTTP requests per second on average.

In its Aug. 19 writeup, Cloudflare neglected to assign a name to the botnet behind the attack. But on Thursday DDoS protection firm Qrator Labs identified the culprit — “Meris” — a new monster that first emerged at the end of June 2021.

Qrator says Meris has launched even bigger attacks since: A titanic and ongoing DDoS that hit Russian Internet search giant Yandex last week is estimated to have been launched by roughly 250,000 malware-infected devices globally, sending 21.8 million bogus requests-per-second.

While last night’s Meris attack on this site was far smaller than the recent Cloudflare DDoS, it was far larger than the Mirai DDoS attack in 2016 that held KrebsOnSecurity offline for nearly four days. The traffic deluge from Thursday’s attack on this site was was more than four times what Mirai threw at this site five years ago. This latest attack involved more than two million requests-per-second. By comparison, the 2016 Mirai DDoS generated approximately 450,000 requests-per-second.

According to Qrator, which is working with Yandex on combating the attack, Meris appears to be made up of Internet routers produced by MikroTik. Qrator says the United States is home to the most number of MikroTik routers that are potentially vulnerable to compromise by Meris — with more than 42 percent of the world’s MikroTik systems connected to the Internet (followed by China — 18.9 percent– and a long tail of one- and two-percent countries).

The darker areas indicate larger concentrations of potentially vulnerable MikroTik routers. Qrator says there are about 328,000 MikroTik devices currently responding to requests from…

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Hacker behind huge T-Mobile data breach says company’s security is ‘awful’

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The 21-year-old hacker who broke into T-Mobile’s servers and stole personal records for more than 50 million people says the company’s “awful” security made it easy — and that he did it for attention. 

“Generating noise was one goal,” hacker John Binns gloated in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Their security is awful.” 

Binns broke into T-Mobile’s servers earlier in August, stealing data on more than 54 million current, former and prospective customers, according to T-Mobile.

While some customers had social security numbers and birthdays exposed, others had unique phone-linked data like IMEI and IMSI numbers stolen — which other hackers could use as a starting point to take over victims’ phone lines, according to the Journal. 

Binns — who goes by screen names including IRDev and v0rtex — would not tell the paper whether he been paid to execute the hack or had sold any of the stolen data. He also would not say whether he worked alone. 

T-Mobile did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the report. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s office in Seattle is reportedly investigating the hack.

Binns, an American who grew up in northern Virginia who moved to his mother’s home of Turkey at age 18, said that he accessed T-Mobile’s servers after discovering an unprotected router exposed on the internet. He then reportedly used the router as an entry point to breach T-Mobile’s data center in Washington state and made off with the stolen data around Aug. 4. 

Millions of T-Mobile customers had social security numbers and birthdays exposed.
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett

“I was panicking because I had access to something big,” Binns said.

As evidence of his involvement, Binns showed the newspaper that he had access to an account that had shared screenshots of T-Mobile’s internal systems. 

Glenn Gerstell, a former general counsel for the National Security Agency, told the Journal that Binns’ description of T-Mobile’s security system was concerning.

“That to me does not sound like good data management practices,” he said. 

Binns also claimed that he was being persecuted…

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John Anthony Smith: Huge Meat Producer Is Latest To Be Under Attack From Cyber Villains

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(John Anthony Smith, president of the fast-growing Conversant Group on the Southside, advises on Internet security after recent attacks by cyber gangs – first on a U.S. pipeline company and now a huge beef producer.)

 Just weeks after attackers shut down Colonial Pipeline, JBS, the second largest meat producer of beef, pork, and chicken in the U.S., is experiencing disrupted production due to a recent ransomware attack.


 

Unfortunately, the world has changed and threat actors are far more sophisticated than they once were.  In many cases, the capabilities of the threat actors are outpacing those of the defenders.  Conversant Group regularly aids companies, like JBS, in recovery from ransomware and other types of cyber events.  It absolutely breaks my heart to see companies and their customers suffer from these heinous crimes.  

A JBS shutdown, even for one day, would be equivalent to the loss of 25 percent of the U.S.’s beef processing capacity.  Any necessary shutdown, or delayed production, will result in increased prices.  While the threat actors get rich, their actions compound suffering for low income communities.

It seems, based on public statements, that JBS has protected its ability to recover; however, the ability to recover still, often, doesn’t translate to instant or rapid recovery.  We, at Conversant Group, are devoted to defending companies from these types of crimes, and our hope is to save as many as possible from this suffering.  Defense is always less expensive than recovery.  

 

Our prayers are with the IT and third party recovery and forensics teams as they work endlessly to get their systems back online.  We know, first hand, the toll the recovery from these events take on the IT staff involved.  We are sure there are many people not sleeping tonight while they put this environment back together.

As business leaders, we must evolve our defenses and continually attempt to outpace the attackers.

 

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Global Computer Security for Consumer Market to Witness Huge Growth by 2025

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Computer Security for Consumer Market 2021 massive growth with NortonLifeLock, Kaspersky Lab, Avast, Fortinet, ESET, McAfee, F-Secure – The CourierGlobal Computer Security for Consumer Market 2020 by Company, Type and Application, Forecast to 2025 qualitatively & quantitatively analyzes the market with a description of market sizing and growth. The report offers complete data to help businesses develop their business and plan their way towards growth. The report provides figures including the latest trends and developments in the global Computer Security for Consumer market industry and important facts. The report entails a comprehensive database on market estimation based on historical data analysis. It throws light on different factors and trends affecting the development chart of the global market.

NOTE: Our report highlights the major issues and hazards that companies might come across due to the unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19.

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Complete Overview:

The primary objective of this report is to provide brief knowledge about the industry landscape with opportunities wide open in the market. In the research study, the research analysts have conducted a detailed study about all the market segments and were able to categorize the segments and the regions that should be concentrated by the market players in the coming years. The regional dominance and the highest growing regions are properly segregated for the clients so that they can channelize their investments and strategize their plans accordingly. The major segments that are categorized for the global Computer Security for Consumer market including the kindness of product, use as per specific regions, and their distribution channel or vendors.

Primitive vendors included in the market are:

NortonLifeLock, Kaspersky Lab, Avast, Fortinet, ESET, McAfee, F-Secure, Bitdefender, Trend Micro, Comodo, AHNLAB

The pictorial and informative representation of the market drivers and opportunities has been well explained through the different segmentation including product, application, competitive landscape, and geography. The research report provides a complete overview and research of the global Computer Security for Consumer market. The market dynamics are well explained in the report. The key…

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