The internet service attack on the East Coast on Oct. 21, Friday, has been resolved. According to internet traffic company Dyn, the attack was well planned and executed.
The attacks came from "tens of millions of IP addresses at the same time," CNBC quoted Dyn as saying. The engineers from the company were able to fix each attack and restore the service afterwards.
A senior United States intelligence official said that the sudden attack was a case of internet vandalism. He said that the attack seemed to be not sponsored by any other country or state. He also said that it did not come from one person or a hacker group.
Dyn chief strategy officer Kyle York said that it was a very smart attack, USA Today quoted him saying during a conference call with reporters. He said that when their engineers tried to fix the attack the first time, the hackers would react and counter it right away. He also said that they are learning from this attack.
York explained that the attack was complex and had multiple points, which made it hard for their engineers to fight off. This complication made it hard for them to check if the traffic was legitimate or from a botnet attack.
A lot of customers of Dyn, law enforcement, and even their rivals lent their aid to help them. York thanked all of them for giving them all the support they needed.
Security experts believe that the attackers may have used Mirai, a hacking program that is easy to use and allows unskilled hackers to take over online devices. It can also be used for launching DDoS attacks on any computer system.
The Mirai software first uses a malware from phishing emails to infect a computer network, the company explained. After that, it spreads to the devices that are connected to the network like printers, DVRs, and computers. After getting infected, all infected devices will create a robot network or botnet to send millions of messages to the target.
Check out the Dyn video below: