Spamhaus Asks for Cloudflare’s Help
When the systems went down, Spamhaus Cloudflare for help, a company dedicated to improving security and performance of companies. Cloudflare works by serving cached versions of pages in the event of an outage or error – this helps websites maintain consistent ‘up’ status, even when the site is inaccessible.
DDOS attacks are still happening, but Spamhaus confirms that they are smaller. The attacks were organised and aimed at specific DNS routers, many of which are connected to each other to help create a faster connection. When one is struggling, it will send a request to another. With the attack, many routers struggled – causing the worldwide problems.
Ready for the Next DDoS Attack
Spamhaus is constantly looking out for new attacks, which happen all the time and change in nature. The majority of attacks are small, which is why this one has been such a problem; many tech experts have equated it to a nuclear war. For now, the system is back to normal and usual Internet speeds should resume as the attacks taper off.
References:
Kumar, N and Rawlinson, K. ‘Biggest Cyber Attack in History’ Slows Down Internet Worldwide After Quarrel Between Web-hosting Company and Anti-spam Group. (2013). The Independent. Accessed March 28, 2013.
McGarry, C. How the World’s Largest Cyberattack Slows Down Your Internet Use. (2013) MacWorld. Accessed March 28, 2013.
Jenkins, Q. Answers About Recent DDoS Attack on Spamhaus and DDoS Update – March 2013. (2013). Spamhaus. Accessed March 28, 2013.
CloudFlare. The DDoS Attack that Knocked Spamhaus Offline (And How We Mitigated It). (2013). Accessed March 28, 2013.
Schwartz, M. DDoS Spam Feud Backfires: ‘Bulletproof’ CyberBunker Busted. (2013). InformationWeek. Accessed March 28, 2013.
© Copyright 2013 Alexandria Ingham, All rights Reserved. Written For: Decoded Science
Leave a Reply