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DDoS Attacks Rising
One in five UK businesses experienced a DDoS attack last year according to a new survey.
Analytics firm Neustar said that while the percentage is significantly lower than that experienced by their US equivalents it is still fairly high. More than 22 percent of the 381 organisations participating in the annual trends study reported DDoS attacks, compared to 35 percent experiencing the same in a separate study carried out among US firms in 2012.
Neustar set out to measure revenue ‘risk per hour’ which is a measure of what it might cost a business in a particular sector to experience DdoS downtime. They found that the majority of organisations reckoned this at less than $1,500 per hour.
Most of the rest put it somewhere between $1,500 and $15,000 although one in four financial services firms put the number at $250,000 per hour. This cost included brand damage and unexpected customer service calls.
China Denies Hack Attack
China has denied involvement in hacking US environment monitoring satellites.
Last week the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission released a draft report about several incidents where US satellites were interfered with in 2007 and 2008.
The Commission did not say that the attacks were traced back to China, but it did cite China’s military as a prime suspect, due to the similarity of the techniques used with “authoritative Chinese military writings” on disabling satellite control.
The hackers gained access to the satellites on at least four occasions through a ground station in Norway. The unauthorised access lasted for between two and 12 minutes. While the attacks did no real damage, they did demonstrate that it is possible to hijack satellites, which is a worrying realisation when military satellites are taken into consideration.
China has a bad reputation throughout the world for alleged cyber attacks, often being the first to blame when a major attack has been discovered. The US has not been the only target either, with alleged attacks against Canada and France having been reported earlier this year.
“[The US] has always been viewing China with colored lenses. This report is untrue and has ulterior motives. It’s not worth a comment,” said Hong Lei, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, according to Reuters.
Chinese Government Questioned About Cyber-attack
June 18, 2011 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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The U.S. State Department questioned the Chinese government regarding an attack that had temporarily shut down the website Change.org after the site hosted a petition urging Chinese authorities to release artist Ai Weiwei from custody.
U.S. deputy assistant secretary Daniel Baer raised concerns about the attack in April with China’s foreign ministry, according to an official letter sent from the State Department to U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.). Change.org obtained a copy of the letter and released it Tuesday.
The nature of those talks is still somewhat vague. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said it had no current information on the matter and deferred to the State Department. China’s foreign ministry has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Change.org, an online petitioning platform, was the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack originating from China on April 17. The attacks nearly brought down the site for days.
DDoS attacks can do this by using hundreds or thousands of hacked computers to drive traffic to a website. The data will become so overwhelming that the site will become inaccessible to users.
Change.org said the DDoS attacks from China continue to bring down the site intermittently. The FBI is investigating the case, said Benjamin Joffe-Walt, an editor with Change.org.