Page 15 - Threat Intelligence 11-27-2019

DDoS Attacks Target Amazon, SoftLayer and Telecom Infrastructure. The last 30 days has seen a renewed
increase in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) activity, according to researchers, who said that they have
observed a number of criminal campaigns mounting TCP reflection DDoS attacks against corporations.
Researchers at Radware said that the list of victims include a number of large companies, including Amazon,
IBM subsidiary SoftLayer, Eurobet Italia SRL, Korea Telecom, HZ Hosting and SK Broadband. The activity is a
continuation of an uptick in attackers leveraging TCP reflection attacks that began in 2018, according to the
firm. These tend to be low bandwidth, but they generate high packet rates (increased volumes of packets per
second) that require large amounts of resources from network devices to process the traffic and cause
outages. That’s why large corporate and telecom networks are often targets, Radware researchers explained.

Source: https://threatpost.com/massive-ddos-amazon-telecom-infrastructure/150096/

Back-2-school hacking: Kaspersky blames pesky script kiddies for rash of DDoS cyber hooliganism. Kasperksy
researchers have blamed pesky schoolkids for the big September spike in denial-of-service attacks. They found
that more than half of DDoS attacks in the third quarter happen in the month of September. Overall attacks
were up just over 30 per cent compared to the second quarter and increased by a similar amount compared to
the same period last year. But unlike other periods, the growth is mostly down to quite simple methods rather
than an increase in smart, application-based attacks. That and the targeting of mainly education sites – 60 per
cent of stopped attacks were against either schools, universities or electronic journals – led Kaspersky to
believe that students are to blame for the uptick. The Russian security firm said: "We observed a similar
picture last year, since it is due to students returning to school and university. Most of these attacks are acts of
cyber hooliganism carried out by amateurs, most likely with no expectation of financial gain.“

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/11/kids_blamed_for_ddos_spike_in_september/

Be warned: Buildings next in line for cyberattacks, Joburg municipality is just the beginning. The
Johannesburg municipality cyberattack is just the beginning of attacks that will befall society as technology
becomes part of everything. Most people who work in cities work in smart buildings that control their
environment with technology. Most of these buildings have sensors that monitor their operations. Most
elements of modern-day buildings use technology for lighting, audiovisual, smart metering, parking, elevators,
video surveillance, access and security as well as air quality. Digitising buildings is currently a major trend.
However, this trend comes with new security issues, according to Frost & Sullivan’s IT/OT Security Convergence
for Building Technologies report. According to Eset security expert Tony Anscombe, perpetrators of cyber-risks
in buildings could be nation-states, criminals and hacktivists. Speaking at the 2019 Eset Security Day,
Anscombe indicated that in some buildings attacks could come in the form of remotely controlling
temperature by shutting down cooling/heating systems within a building and causing chaos. Such an attack
could be disastrous for a hospital building.
Source: https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/technology/be-warned-buildings-next-in-line-for-
cyberattacks-joburg-municipality-is-just-the-beginning-36418409

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