>We don't know who is doing this, but it feels like a large nation state. China or Russia would be my first guesses.
Why not the USA?
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.
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.
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
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)
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.
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?
Where did I say it was my immediate explanation and this is _likely_ what is happening?
> 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.
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.