Hackers launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against Dyn this morning. The attack, which lasted around two hours, was responsible for taking down or interrupting traffic to a host of popular websites. Including your favorite, probably.
The Domain Name System (DNS) routes visitors to the right destination by matching legible domain names with numerical IP addresses. It is therefore a rather integral part of the internet. Until someone disrupts it. At which point it’s less than useless.
That’s exactly what happened today (October 21) when unidentified hackers launched a DDoS against Dyn, a major DNS company used by a host of different websites. The first sign of trouble was when Dyn issued the following statement:
“Starting at 11:10 UTC on October 21st-Friday 2016 we began monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure. Some customers may experience increased DNS query latency and delayed zone propagation during this time.”
At this point people trying to reach countless websites, including Twitter, Reddit, GitHub, Etsy, Imgur, PayPal, Spotify, Yelp, and the PlayStation Network all reported problems. It then became clear this was mainly limited to the east coast of the United States, with isolated outages elsewhere.
Normal Service Has Been Resumed :
All services were “restored to normal as of 13:20 UTC”. So if you notice any of your regular haunts playing up again, it’s likely to be either another targeted DDoS attack, or your crappy internet connection.
The source of the attack hasn’t yet been identified. However, the size and scale of the attack suggest it’s someone with the skills to pay the bills. The handful of people still using Twitter (yes, they still exist) are currently speculating over who was responsible. Guesses range from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin.
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