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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The BBC has this to say [bbc.com] about a recent disruption of its website:

A group that says it targets online activity linked to so-called Islamic State (IS) has claimed it was behind an attack on the BBC's website. All the BBC's websites were unavailable for several hours on New Year's Eve after what a BBC source described as a "distributed denial of service" attack.

The group, calling itself New World Hacking, said it had carried out the attack as a "test of its capabilities". The BBC has not confirmed or denied such an attack caused the problems.

More coverage at NYT [nytimes.com] and ZDNet [zdnet.com]. Some additional (but unconfirmed) details were given to ZDNet:

Ownz, a self-described "hacktivist," sent ZDNet a screenshot of a web interface that was allegedly used to launch the attacks, indicating an assault of up to 602 Gbps, backing up similar claims the group made to the BBC. We were not able to verify the authenticity of the screenshot, or the alleged size of the attack.

If that attack size is proven true, it would vastly surpass the previous record for largest DDoS attack of 334 Gbps, recorded by Arbor Networks in mid-2015.

Ownz said the size of the attack was possible by using at least two "Amazon servers," but did not disclose additional details. Amazon has previously said that Amazon Web Services "employs a number of automated detection and mitigation techniques to prevent the misuse of our services," with the capability to stop denial-of-service attacks from being launched and to shut down such an attack quickly if one is detected.

"We have our ways of bypassing Amazon," said Ownz. "The best way to describe it is we tap into a few administrative services that Amazon is use to using. The [sic] simply set our bandwidth limit as unlimited and program our own scripts to hide it."

Original Submission