Wednesday, September 11, 2013

China under Massive DDoS Attack

A large DDoS attack has taken down much of the country’s Internet a few days ago. According to estimations, it was the biggest DDoS attack the Chinese government ever faced.

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The attack started early weekend and in a few hours it picked up to the point of affecting Internet users. The security experts explained that the attack targeted the .cn registry that was eventually knocked out for 2 to 4 hours. Fortunately, most .cn websites weathered the storm, relying on registry records stored by their service providers.

After the attack has stopped, the Chinese users were again able to access all sites smoothly, except those that discuss democracy, dissidents, Tibet and the Tiananmen Square massacre, along with a few thousand other things that communists didn’t like to discuss.

The main question was who was responsible for this attack. Despite the fact that things were quiet on the international front, the country is embroiled in a few internal PR disasters, including the trial of Bo Xilai and a crackdown on social media. Although the infamous Great Firewall of China was always good at filtering embarrassing online searches, it was never designed with security in mind – or, at least, not this type of security.

The security experts admit that despite its sophistication and apparent success, the attack could have been carried out by a single individual.

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