Cyber attack shuts down popular websites worldwide

Last Friday, internet traffic company, Dyn, experienced not one, but two DDoS attack on its DNS servers resulting to numerous sites worldwide shutting down.

Among these sites are Twitter, Etsy, Github, Vox, Spotify, AirBnB, Netflix, and Reddit. Dyn is a company that manages website domains and routes internet traffic and with the DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack, affected the aforementioned domains.

A DDoS attack is the act of flooding a website with heavy traffic so that it overloads and interrupts the flow of its normal service.

“If you take out one of these DNS service providers, you can disrupt a large number of popular online services, which is exactly what we’re seeing today,” said Jeremiah Grossman, chief of security strategy at cybersecurity startup SentinelOne.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack and until now, is a mystery. Dyn told CNBC that the attacks are “well planned and executed, coming from tens of millions of IP addresses at the same time.” It also added that one of the sources came from the ‘Internet of Things’ devices like DVRs, printer, and appliances connected to the internet.

Recent updates state that Dyn’s engineers were able to target each attack — restoring service shortly after the incident.

{Sources 1, 2}