Category Archives: mirai

30 years ago, the world’s first cyberattack set the stage for modern cybersecurity challenges

Posted on by

Back in November 1988, Robert Tappan Morris, son of the famous cryptographer Robert Morris Sr., was a 20-something graduate student at Cornell who wanted to know how big the internet was – that is, how many devices were connected to it. So he wrote a program that would travel from computer to computer and ask each machine to send a signal back to a control server, which would keep count. The program worked well – too well, in fact. Morris had known that if it traveled too fast there might be problems, but the limits he built in weren’t enough to keep the program from clogging up large sections of the internet, both copying itself to new machines and sending those pings back. When he realized what was happening, even his messages warning system administrators about the problem couldn’t get through. His program became the first of a particular type […]

The post 30 years ago, the world’s first cyberattack set the stage for modern cybersecurity challenges appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading 30 years ago, the world’s first cyberattack set the stage for modern cybersecurity challenges→

Man Ordered to Pay $8.6 Million for Launching DDoS Attacks against Rutgers University

Posted on by

A New Jersey man received a court order to pay $8.6 million for launching a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against Rutgers University. On October 26, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey announced the … Continue reading Man Ordered to Pay $8.6 Million for Launching DDoS Attacks against Rutgers University→

University DDoS attack leads to $8.6 million fine, house arrest for New Jersey man

Posted on by

One of the masterminds behind the massive Mirai botnet attack of 2016 has been sentenced after pleading guilty to another set of disruptive attacks on Rutgers University between 2014 and 2016, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey announced Friday. The Department of Justice says that between 2014 and 2016, Paras Jha violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by launching several distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks on Rutgers University, flooding the university’s network with internet traffic. His attacks paralyzed a central server at Rutgers that maintained a portal that students and faculty use for assignments, prosecutors say. “Jha succeeded in taking the portal offline for multiple consecutive periods, causing damage to Rutgers University, its faculty, and its students,” the DOJ announcement said. For the crime, the 22-year-old from Union County, New Jersey, is being ordered to pay $8.6 million in restitution, serve six months of house arrest, and perform 2,500 hours […]

The post University DDoS attack leads to $8.6 million fine, house arrest for New Jersey man appeared first on Cyberscoop.

Continue reading University DDoS attack leads to $8.6 million fine, house arrest for New Jersey man→

New Versions of the Mirai Botnet Detected: Work Attributed to Independent Hackers

Posted on by

Two years following the worldwide Mirai botnet attack criminals worldwide are utilizing it for various malicious uses. Recently security experts discovered that several new versions of it have been developed. An in-depth look shows that the new release… Continue reading New Versions of the Mirai Botnet Detected: Work Attributed to Independent Hackers→

Poorly secured SSH servers targeted by Chalubo botnet

Posted on by

SophosLabs has detected a new DDoS botnet targeting poorly secured SSH servers – called Chalubo, it is named in honour of its use of the ChaCha stream cipher. Continue reading Poorly secured SSH servers targeted by Chalubo botnet→