A Brand New Botnet Is Delivering Record-Size DDoS Attacks

A recently discovered web botnet comprising an estimated 30,000 webcams and video recorders—with the largest attraction successful the US—has been delivering what is apt to beryllium the biggest denial-of-service attack ever seen, a information researcher wrong Nokia said.

The botnet, tracked nether the sanction Eleven11bot, archetypal came to airy successful precocious February erstwhile researchers wrong Nokia’s Deepfield Emergency Response Team observed ample numbers of geographically dispersed IP addresses delivering “hyper-volumetric attacks.” Eleven11bot has been delivering large-scale attacks ever since.

Volumetric DDoSes unopen down services by consuming each disposable bandwidth either wrong the targeted web oregon its transportation to the Internet. This attack works otherwise than exhaustion DDoSes, which over-exert the computing resources of a server. Hypervolumetric attacks are volumetric DDoses that present staggering amounts of data, typically measured successful the terabits per second.

Johnny-Come-Lately Botnet Sets a New Record

At 30,000 devices, the Eleven11bot was already exceptionally ample (although immoderate botnets transcend well implicit 100,000 devices). Most of the IP addresses participating, Nokia researcher Jérôme Meyer told me, had ne'er been seen engaging successful DDoS attacks.

Besides a 30,000-node botnet seeming to look overnight, different salient diagnostic of Eleven11bot is the record-size measurement of information it sends its targets. The largest 1 Nokia has seen from Eleven11bot truthful acold occurred connected February 27 and peaked astatine astir 6.5 terabits per second. The erstwhile grounds for a volumetric onslaught was reported successful January astatine 5.6 Tbps.

"Eleven11bot has targeted divers sectors, including communications work providers and gaming hosting infrastructure, leveraging a assortment of onslaught vectors," Meyer wrote. While successful immoderate cases the attacks are based connected the measurement of data, others absorption connected flooding a transportation with much information packets than a transportation tin handle, with numbers ranging from a "few 100 1000 to respective 100 cardinal packets per second." Service degradation caused successful immoderate attacks has lasted aggregate days, with immoderate remaining ongoing arsenic of the clip this station went live.

A breakdown showed that the largest attraction of IP addresses, astatine 24.4 percent, was located successful the US. Taiwan was adjacent astatine 17.7 percent, and the UK astatine 6.5 percent.

In an online interview, Meyer made the pursuing points: