The Internet was almost taken down recently, as many people around the world were prevented from accessing various popular sites and services, including Netflix, Spotify, Reddit and many more. The outage was caused by an attack against one of the largest DNS providers in the world, Dyn.
And while the company was quick to address the issue, another attack followed through which actually caused an even more widespread disruption. The company kept quiet during that time, which is completely understandable given the sensitive nature of the situation, and the fact that they probably had to work extra hard to resolve the problem.
Now, we’ve seen an official statement by Dyn, and the company explained that there was even a third attack, but it was mitigated in its early stages and managed to cause no problems. However, the post by Dyn also highlighted just how problematic this attack was, and it painted the situation in a worrying light.
According to the company, it’s pretty normal for them to have to deal with attacks on their infrastructure, but this was something they had never seen before, calling it a very sophisticated attack. The post explained that the company’s servers received an ongoing barrage from over 10 million IP addresses, many identified as part of a major well-known botnet.
The company went on to explain that they were being attacked from multiple different angles and using a variety of techniques, and it’s obvious that this was a carefully prepared attack that took some planning to execute properly.
Some suspect that it might have actually been a dry run for a much more serious attack, but when exactly something like this could occur is hard to tell. There are various things going on in the world right now that would create a good opportunity for someone to take down the Internet briefly, and many people are worried that someone with a lot of power and resources could be preparing for something sinister.
One of the main theories links the incidents with the upcoming US Presidential elections, but there are many other legitimate possibilities, so it’s probably not a good idea to jump to assumptions like that. On the other hand, we’ve seen some interesting incidents recently, such as the Ecuador embassy cutting off Internet access to Julian Assange, and it looks like plenty of people around the world could benefit from exploiting people’s connectivity.
For now, the attacks have died down and everything seems back to normal. But we can only imagine the nervousness behind Dyn’s doors, as the company’s engineers are likely working around the clock to ensure that this incident doesn’t repeat again.
Knowing how Internet security works though, it’s probably hard, if not impossible, to actually guarantee that. There are far too many factors at play here, and the best the company can do is strengthen their defenses as much as they can in anticipation of the worst. It may also be a good idea to be particularly prepared on certain important upcoming dates.
With all that’s happened in the last couple of days, some people have been wondering if the Internet could be more vulnerable than we normally consider. It’s true that attacks like this can cause major disruptions, but at the same time, the Internet as a whole is designed to be decentralized and resistant to failure.