Dive Brief:
- New World Hacking, the group claiming responsibility for the New Year’s Eve DDoS attack against the BBC website, said the attack reached 602Gbps.
- Though the size is unconfirmed, the BBC attack is almost twice the size of the previous record of 334Gbps by Arbor Networks last year.
- New World Hacking said that the attack was "only a test."
Dive Insight:
CIOs and other tech experts are increasingly concerned about powerful DDoS attacks, and the one against the BBC is particularly alarming because of its speed.
"If it's proven, it would be the largest attack on record,” said Paul Nicholson, director of product marketing at A10 Networks. “But it depends on whether it's actually confirmed, because it's still a relatively recent attack."
New World Hacking also successfully took down Donald Trump's campaign website the same day.
Raytheon|Websense CEO John McCormack said attacks against political websites will likely intensify as the elections grow closer.
"This is just the beginning and it will get worse -- and more personal -- as candidates see their campaign apps hacked, Twitter feeds hijacked, and voters are targeted with very specific phishing attacks based on public data such as voter registration, Facebook and LinkedIn,” he said, CIO reported.
Tools which deliver attacks as a service often use botnets or use stolen payment cards to rent cloud-based servers, said Nicholson. But not all DDoS attack services are illegal -- some are used to test whether or not a website can handle a significant load.
