Editorials & Other Articles

Bill USA

(6,436 posts) Fri Oct 21, 2016, 05:40 PM Oct 2016

Internet struggles? It’s not you. A colossal hack has crippled America’s web address book

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/internet-attack-america-dyn-dns-ddos/

Trying to watch Netflix’s new season of “Black Mirror” but can’t connect? You’re not alone.

Early Friday, Hackers struck the New Hampshire-based web company Dyn, which controls one of the cornerstones of America’s internet infrastructure. The ongoing attack has spawned outages for major websites such as Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, Reddit, Airbnb, Tumblr and The New York Times.

Details are still unraveling, but here’s what we know so far.

At 7:10 am E.T., hackers performed a DDoS attack against Dyn’s Domain Name System services. Domain names are essentially the internet’s version of telephone numbers. So without these services, your computer cannot “call up” or connect to a website.
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Internet struggles? It’s not you. A colossal hack has crippled America’s web address book (Original Post) Bill USA Oct 2016 OP

Read that it is a coordinated attack--coming in 3 waves riversedge Oct 2016 #1

a ddos is not really a hack. most often uses malware on thousands of computers to create a bot net Foggyhill Oct 2016 #2

Everyone should have a locally caching DNS server lapfog_1 Oct 2016 #3

good info, thanks. Bill USA Oct 2016 #4

riversedge

(70,239 posts)

1. Read that it is a coordinated attack--coming in 3 waves

Reply to Bill USA (Original post)

Fri Oct 21, 2016, 05:50 PM

Oct 2016

Foggyhill

(1,060 posts)

2. a ddos is not really a hack. most often uses malware on thousands of computers to create a bot net

Reply to Bill USA (Original post)

Fri Oct 21, 2016, 05:58 PM

Oct 2016

lapfog_1

(29,205 posts)

3. Everyone should have a locally caching DNS server

Reply to Bill USA (Original post)

Fri Oct 21, 2016, 05:59 PM

Oct 2016

They aren't hard to set up... most websites never change their IP address so all you need is the cache and to resolve the name to IP address yourself (or your internet provider can do it).

You won't be able to get to non-cached addresses, but the vast majority of pages you click ( and the pages they reference ) will be in the cache

Bill USA

(6,436 posts)

4. good info, thanks.

Reply to lapfog_1 (Reply #3)

Sat Oct 22, 2016, 03:58 PM

Oct 2016

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