News

Unprecedented cyberattack affects global internet functionality

Cybercriminals have launched an attack of unprecedented scale against one of the world's premiere providers of anti-spam Domain Name System blacklist services. According to the BBC, the extent of the attack upon network infrastructure is such that internet operability has been compromised across the globe.

The organization targeted by the attack is a non-profit group that helps email clients filter out spam or malicious content with a set of blocklists. The organization believes it was targeted because it recently added to its database an internet service provider known to have loose guidelines regarding the content it was willing to host.

The cyberattack has reportedly been underway for over a week, with hackers intermittently using Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) campaigns to overload the organization's servers with an influx of traffic. According to a member of a cybersecurity firm, the amount of traffic present in these DDoS attacks has dwarfed previous benchmarks. Assaults that successfully knocked major financial institutions offline hovered around 50 gigabits per second (Gbps), and the largest known DDoS attack peaked at 100 Gbps.  In comparison, the recent cybercriminal campaign has been able to hit 300 Gbps.

The additional traffic has affected network functions across the globe, prompting many companies to provide the organization with resources to ease the load. The organization's leaders maintained that, even with the excessive influx of network traffic, their servers have remained online.

Some positive news has emerged from the DDoS assaults, however. Speaking to USA Today, cybersecurity expert Garth Bruen argued the latest attacks are a retaliatory outburst, suggesting that international efforts to combat cybercriminals have been effective in disrupting operations.

"No one would attack Spamhaus if their efforts to police spammers were not effective," Bruen told the news outlet. "Something Spamhaus is doing is hitting the pocketbooks of the crooks exploiting the internet economy."

With cybercriminal syndicates launching more sophisticated and powerful attacks, network security has become a paramount concern. Protect sensitive data while in transit by getting an SSL certificate today.

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