https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/09/someone_is_le...
Edit: And to be clear: I don't mean to imply there's any connection :)
host -t ns twitter.com: ns3.p34.dynect.net, ns4.p34.dynect.net, ns1.p34.dynect.net, ns2.p34.dynect.net.
host -t ns amazon.com: ns3.p31.dynect.net, ns4.p31.dynect.net, ns2.p31.dynect.net, pdns6.ultradns.co.uk, pdns1.ultradns.net, ns1.p31.dynect.net.
"How do all these major players have singly-homed DNS"?
Though if they targeted electric grid, water, and public transport, starting early in the day and choosing the regions by their populations political leaning, it could easily have an effect on the result itself.
Control the message, and through that the actual votes cast.
Of course, I have no information on the security model of the pre-election preparations and post-election tabulation, but luckily results for each polling place are also posted for the public to inspect - media outlets and campaigns can verify the tabulation themselves with a slight delay.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160912/16553435504/fbi-d...
Of course, he said nothing about internal rigging:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/21/major-websites-across-east-co...
Is this par for course for all large DDOS attacks or did something tip them off?
I would assume that when a large number of big enterprise-y things go down, HSI takes notice. When other providers get attacks that are 20x larger (gbit/sec), but have much less widespread impact and impact on less enterprise-y things, they don't care so much.
Why not the USA?
Note that this wouldn't rule out the USA as such. First, it could be a longshot preparedness thing, with no expectation that it would ever be used. Second, they could be red-teaming the thing (looking for weaknesses so that they can arrange for them to be shored up).
In either of these scenarios, it's no less likely that the USA would be doing it than anyone else. If you assume that whoever is doing this is planning to use their knowledge, however, the economic argument makes the USA less likely to be involved.
For example, if a particular part of the government got wind of a data dump about to be released by another nation-state or independent actor (for example, a leak of some kind) - I think some parts of the USA government that possesses the ability to do so wouldn't hesitate to take down dns to the entire internet to avoid another similar data leak to the Snowden dump.
Be really wary of attributing intent: you do not know who will benefit the most from taking down certain services. To claim that the US benefits from the internet so much that it wouldn't do certain actions to protect itself from certain types of harm is shortsighted.
Even my example could be really wrong, but the idea is that nobody really can say - "oh the internet is too important to xyz, they'll never do anything!"
I don't understand how this would change anything unless you're assuming they would take down the Internet permanently
News cycles happen fairly rapidly, so if you could take down a number of sites that might be friendly to the dissemination of potentially damaging information just long enough such that it's forgotten about, or the attack is so large the media talks about the attack instead, then you might be able to successfully avoid widespread public knowledge of such information. Though, this would be best aided with collusion or cooperation (intentional or otherwise) from the media. Toss in a few unrelated services as a bonus for collateral damage, and you might be able to avoid scrutiny or, at the very least, shift the blame to an unrelated state actor. It won't prevent the release of information, but that's not the point--you want to prevent the dissemination and analysis of that information by the public at large.
This is all hypothetical, of course, and not likely to work. It also comes with the associated risk that if you were discovered or implicated, public outrage might be even worse than if you allowed the release of the information you hoped to distract from in the first place! As such, I can't imagine anyone would be stupid enough to try.
I'll take my tinfoil hat off now.
I still give it less than a 5% probability, though.
Honestly, that's fairly thin. WL uses torrents and other means of disseminating data that don't rely on central control structures. Plus, presumably, WL has the ability to quickly shift data into secure hands who are willing to release it when things quiet down.
So, sure, the USA could go send someone to sieze the hard drives of someone who has confidential information. But, I have to imagine one of the first steps when getting that kind of information is to disseminate it to others (at least some of whom are unknown to the states). If they were hit, these people would very quickly take that as a signal to indiscriminately release all the information.
Remember, a data leak is not just a technical issue. They can resolve it in any number of ways - get a small team incursion into another state's territory for extraction, etc. All the outage needs to do is to hold open that window for enough time for all the different parts of the entire threat response chain to do each part's job.
A lot of technical people think tech is the end, but no - if you get a small team to go knock on the person's door, and get your internet response team to shut down dns, or to get someone on site at the telco to perform certain actions at the router/switch level, etc all portions working together is a powerful way to resolve or to accomplish certain goals.
Think bigger, especially with state actors - the resources are there, and this line of thought is probably really basic stuff that people came up with in the 1960's or 70's (even when the arpanet was being created, there was probably already a team tasked with taking such actions - it only make sense to have 2 teams working on such goals in tandem - one to create the network, the other to take it down)
I'd be more willing to put my money on someone attacking an entity downstream who is normally immune to DDOS attacks of this size.
Not necessarily so strange. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists for instance.
As for the length of the "test," they might want to see how the US would react to such attacks in the future, and shake out anything critical. "Oh, these two agencies can't talk to each other. Good to know."
I hate the way modern times makes me look.
To pin it on someone else?
"17 Intelligence agencies told me Russia hacked our DNC thing" (Clinton).
So maybe it is now "Oh look they took down the whole internet as well".
That's... kind of conspiratorial thinking? Would you cut off your own hand so you could blame it on someone else?
> kind of conspiratorial thinking?
You mean like lizard aliens infiltrating our planet? -No. But in the realm of "shooting down of passenger and military planes, sinking a U.S. ship in the vicinity of Cuba, burning crops, sinking a boat filled with Cuban refugees, attacks by alleged Cuban infiltrators inside the United States, and harassment of U.S. aircraft and shipping and the destruction of aerial drones by aircraft disguised as Cuban MiGs", yes.
It was mostly a reply to "US would have absolutely no reason for doing this" and the reply is there cold be a plausible reason.
Where did I say it was my immediate explanation and this is _likely_ what is happening?
Then I felt horrible.
Some NPR story about US Cybercommand responding to Russian cyber attacks, 'at place and time of our choosing.'
'Some you might hear about. Some you might not.'
FFWD to a couple days ago, NPR story about a botched European and Russian lander.
Today, US Eastern Seaboard is seeing connectivity disruption due to DDoS attacks.
*
Unwinding the stack, the latest news is these DDoS attacks are not likely state sponsored.
Russia pulling off a coordinated attack that soon after and in response to my theorized US retaliation seems unlikely.
US attacking a joint partnership between Russia and Europe civilian space program seems unlikely.
If I had to guess, though, I don't think it's China. I think it's more likely related to the DDoS attacks against Brian Krebs than the probing attacks against the Internet infrastructure, despite how prescient that essay seems right now. And, no, I don't think China is going to launch a preemptive attack on the Internet."
[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/10/ddos_attacks_...
If this is another practice run, then I'm still not impressed. Taking down one provider is not that hard. Good luck finding the resources to do this DDoS to ALL large DNS providers out there.
Maybe it's not really fair to link to that post every time a DDoS with more than average payload happens. Especially since the post doesn't mention any specifics, because well, "protect my sources". It's like the "buy gold now" guy starring in the 2 AM infomercial predicting an economic recession within the next 5 years, without adding what the exact cause is going to be. He is probably going to be right, but that doesn't make him a visionary.
Yeah it's not the whole Internet, but how do you define "taking down the Internet" anyway. Is it every connected computer or just a huge amount of interconnected big websites? Because the latter is happening right now.
As @scrollaway mentioned, 6 weeks ago, Bruce Schneier posted that several companies told him that they're detecting attempts to probe their networks and find ways to bring it down https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/09/someone_is_le...
Now let's look at the progress of events:
- Hillary Clinton's personal email server was hacked a while ago.
- A lone hacker published a document obtained by hacking the DNC servers. The document includes opposition research on Donald Trump and how Hillary can attack him in the election.
- Wikileaks published emails obtained by hacking the DNC
- US intelligence agencies confirmed that Russia was behind the DNC hack
- It was reported that the CIA is starting a cyber attack against Russian targets. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/cia-prepping-possible-cy...
- This is happening while the war in Syria and Iraq is growing. The Russians are there to "fight ISIS" but they have deployed an air defense system even though ISIS doesn't have any air force.
- Russia's only air craft carrier is trespassing through UK waters to get to Syria in a show of force that doesn't really add anything to their military capabilities there.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/20/russian-fleet-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/19/convoy-of-russ...
- Finland (yes, Finland) is increasingly worried about Russia. They violated their air space, and they're questioning Finland's independence. Finland shares a long boarder with Russia.
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-finland-sees-propaganda-att...
- US ships were attacked near Yemen after they're bombed some targets the belong to the rebels. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/13/us-enters-ye...
- US election is in 3 weeks and Donald Trump is openly in love with Putin. Trump questioned the benefit of NATO which is the basis for Europe stability after the 2nd world war.
Say Hello to World War III, everybody!
He states that he's never met Putin nor has any holdings in Russia. He has stated that he is open to positive relationships with the Russian government.
> Trump questioned the benefit of NATO which is the basis for Europe stability after the 2nd world war.
I believe he stated that he wants NATO to "pay their fare share" in the costs of maintaining the organization.
I'm not a Trump supporter but we shouldn't believe everything we read.
“I got to know him very well because we were both on ‘60 Minutes,’ we were stablemates, and we did very well that night.”
The Finns actually have still quite good relationship with Russia (better than other neighbors) and nobody's actually questioning Finland's independence. Baltic countries is a different story.
Source: A Finn here.
> Finland is becoming increasingly worried about what it sees as Russian propaganda against it, including Russian questioning about the legality of its 1917 independence
If they were really gearing up for war why would they move their only carrier away from the mother land. Your article even says it is more of a "show of force" than start of war.
So how did you jump to WW3?
It seems incredibly unlikely that a global war would start over Syria when we've had 60 years of proxy conflict instead. Russia or NATO have absolutely nothing to gain from an open military conflict.
Finland isn't worried, they have had stable relations for half a century as both sides agreed to not mess with each other. They have even refused to join NATO because it is actually safer for Finland and vice versa.
Cowboys with missiles stationed on Russia's border making hyperbole statements (like you do) - now that would be a real threat. (the same was also true the other way around with the Soviets stationing missiles in Cuba)
Is this sabre rattling or the prelude to a global conflict? Surely at worst it will (continue to) be a proxy war between NATO and Russia in Syria and nothing more? What motive is there for Russia or NATO to engage in open warfare? I'm not sure that a slow and prolonged lead up to an open war would even be effective in this situation.
Perhaps it should be "Say hello to Cold War v2.2017"?
Thank you for these links. I'm trying not to get wrapped up in conspiracies but am increasingly worried by the mounting conflict. I'd love to hear a calm, reasoned response from someone more knowledgable than me on these topics.
The players are the 0.001% who control these states and the rest (we) are the captive (and propagandized) audience. They are being super kind as to at least make it entertaining for us.
My personal opinion is that it is mostly political and I think (hope) that what is happening in Syria won't escalate to direct conflict between the US and Russia.
I stumbled across this little blog article the other day and it helped relieve some of my anxieties.
I read they were passing in international waters. Is that not the case? It's clearly a show of force, but no need for the hyperbole if it is not true.