Lots of rumors are floating around about widespread DDoS attacks on major news outlets. Anyone have more info? ( conspiracy )

submitted by Sciency

I've been hearing all about reddits downtime. Now rumors about CBC and RT getting hit. I've heard from several sources today, say that cellphone internet connectivity has gone down, (localized to single towers rather than wide-spread). I've been denied access on voat and 4chan several times today thanks to my random-profile extension (something that doesn't happen to me regularly), which leads me to believe that hosts are tightening restrictions in an attempt to control these attacks.

So, anyone know whats going on? The conspiracy theorists are out in force on /pol/ right now.

Sciency

It says something about the internet that despite all the censorship, someone is still afraid of reddit. Thanks for the comment.

Sciency

That's kind of what I'm thinking as well. It makes sense, because from what I understand the attacks have been rolling from one thing to the next, not attacking multiple places at the same time. Trying to put a number on the bandwidth required to bring down each site, while not giving away too many IPs from their botnet. If thats whats happening, its actually kinda scary. Whomever is planning this theoretical attack would be hoping to maximize the coverage, using only the necessary resources to get the job done...

At this point I'm basing assumptions on assumptions, but... If they are finding the minimum attack bandwidth needed to cripple each site, the number wont stay the same for long. If this is in fact a test run, I'm worried the real deal is coming sooner than later.

Morpheus

The Australian Census website shat itself when everyone went to do it the other night. They said it was a cyber attack.

Sciency

Pol thread discussing DDoS: https://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/85016420/massive-news-ddos-happening

Watch a real-time cyber attack map here: http://map.norsecorp.com/#/

Interesting trend on the attack map, the US and the saudis are consistently getting hit the hardest. Not sure thats a new trend today or anything, but it does say something...

Edit: Also for anyone unfamiliar with norse: the map only shows attacks on a few dozen servers which are run by security firms. There is always some level of aggression against these servers, because they catch wide-angle attacks that focus on a range of IPs. Attacks directed at a single site will not be picked up by this map. However, norse is useful for noting changes in which countries are targeted as a whole. In addition, if there is a sudden massive spike in attacks, and they are all focused against one country, you might be looking at a brute force attack meant to cripple the internet as a whole for a particular region.