Did you experience slower internet this week? It could have been the result a DDoS attack analysts describe as "the biggest cyber-attack of its kind in history," the BBC reports.
Apparently spurring the attack is a dispute between spam filtration firm Spamhaus and Dutch web host Cyberbunker. Reportedly Spamhaus added Cyberbunker servers to its blocklists, a decision triggering a DDoS attack of unprecedented proportions on Spamhaus servers.
Spamhaus accuses Cyberbunker of the week-long attack, as well as cooperation with Russian and E. European "criminal gangs." Meanwhile Cyberbunker insists Spamhaus is abusing of its position, and should not decide "what goes and does not go on the internet."
"We've been under this cyber-attack for well over a week," Spamhaus CEO Steve Linford tells the BBC. "But we're up-- they haven't been able to knock us down. Our engineers are doing an immense job in keeping it up-- this sort of attack would take down pretty much anything else."
Linford also says a number of companies, including Google, are providing resources to help "absorb all this traffic." Spamhaus has over 80 servers around the world, making one of the biggest DNS servers in the world.
Investigating the allegations are 5 different national cyber-police forces around the globe.
DDoS attacks overwhelm servers through flooding with huge amounts of traffic, rendering them unreachable. While being a fairly crude form of attack, DDoS barrages are effective, having broken through security systems at the likes US Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase and the Bank of America.
Go Answers About the Recent DDoS Attack on Spamhaus
Go Global Internet Slows Down After "Biggest Attack in History" (BBC)
