Trying to access Twitter, Spotify and even Soundcloud in many parts of the world has resulted in nothing but a failed URL page. These services have been affected after a DDoS attack has reportedly hit the DNS provider Dyn.
In addition to these, other platforms to have been disrupted are Github, Airbnb and Reddit. The cause and duration of these attacks are yet to be confirmed by the provider. However, the US government are probing whether the attack was a criminal act or not.
It was not immediately clear who was responsible and Gillian Christensen of the US Department of Homeland Security said the agency was “investigating all potential causes.”
Dyn said it had resolved one attack, which disrupted operations for about two hours, but disclosed a second attack a few hours later that was causing further disruptions.
IOT Used For Carrying Out Dyn DDos Attack?
The attacks were the latest in an increasingly menacing string of distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks disrupting internet sites by overwhelming servers with web traffic.
The US Department of Homeland Security warned on 14 October that hackers were using a powerful new approach to launch these campaigns - infecting routers, printers, smart TVs and other connected devices with malware that turns them into "bot" armies that can launch DDoS attacks.
“We have begun monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure,” the company said on its website. “Our engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue.”
(With Inputs from Reuters)
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