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The Department of Homeland Security said it has launched a multi-faceted attempt to defend the nation's computer networks from hackers in light of witnessing a dramatic surge recently with respect to the number of crippling cyberattacks being waged against internet infrastructure.
The DHS's Science and Technology Directorate on Thursday said its cybersecurity division has set its sights on safeguarding the internet against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, an elementary but effective tactic used by hackers to overload a network with illegitimate web traffic to render it useless.
An unprecedented DDoS attack waged in October 2016 targeted Dyn, an internet performance company that runs a popular domain name system that effectively functions as an online directory. Millions of computer users across North American and Europe suffered internet disruptions due to the assault, the likes of which was waged by infecting millions of common, "Internet of Things" start devices with a strain of malicious software known as Mirai.
[...] To stifle future attacks, DHS said it's Distributed Denial of Service Defense (DDoSD) project has spearheaded a three-pronged approach intended to give network infrastructure defenders an advantage over malicious actors.
"The project's two primary focuses are on increasing deployment of best practices to slow attack scale growth and defending networks against a one Tbps attack through development of collaboration tools that can be used by medium-size organizations," DHS said in a statement.
A third component aims to address other types of DDoS attacks, specifically including assaults that could be used to disrupt access to 911 and other emergency services.
Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/18/homeland-security-sets-sights-curbing-wide-scale-d/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday February 24 2017, @12:04PM
Don't ever look at two root causes:
1. software engineering practices - everyone and their dog can write software nowadays; all software, no matter how crappy, come with licences invariably including clauses of limitation of fitness or damages and everybody accepts it without question. And software is ubiquitous nowadays*
2. why does everything need to be connected to Internet? If they do, why do they need to share the same pipes? Why the fridge, a nuclear plant, a video-recorder and a power-grid node need to (potentially) be able to "talk" one with the other (because if they can, they'll do with enough persuasion from a hacker)?
* On the other hand, "Ninety percent of everything is crap" - so perhaps this is how it has to be?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford