AT&T Hit by DDoS Attack, Suffers DNS Outage

Denial of Service Attack
(Photo credit: Toni Birrer)

By Martyn Williams – A distributed denial-of-service attack aimed at AT&T‘s DNS (Domain Name System) servers has disrupted data traffic for some of the company’s customers.

“Due to a distributed denial of service attack attempting to flood our Domain Name System servers in two locations, some AT&T business customers are experiencing intermittent disruptions in service,” an AT&T spokesman told IDG News Service by email. “Restoration efforts are underway and we apologize for any inconvenience to our customers.”

The attack appears to have affected enterprise customers using AT&T’s managed services DNS product. more> http://tinyurl.com/92hhmcq

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FBI takes out $14M DNS malware operation

Image via Wikipedia

By Michael Cooney/Layer 8 – Details of the two-year FBI investigation called Operation Ghost Click were announced today (11/9/11) in New York when a federal indictment was unsealed against six Estonian nationals and one Russian national. The six cyber criminals were taken into custody yesterday in Estonia by local authorities, and the U.S. will seek to extradite them. In conjunction with the arrests, U.S. authorities seized computers and rogue DNS servers at various locations.

Beginning in 2007, the cyber thieves used malware known as DNSChanger to infect computers worldwide, the FBI said. DNSChanger redirected unsuspecting users to rogue servers controlled by the cyber thieves, letting them manipulate users’ web activity. more> http://tinyurl.com/7xghtz9

Related articles

• IBM Security Services, StrategyGroup
• FBI, Estonian police execute ‘biggest cybercriminal takedown in history’ (business.financialpost.com)
• FBI shutters $14m major click-jacking fraud; 4 million computers affected (zdnet.com)
• In the Wake of Estonian FBI Bust, Have You Checked Your DNS Settings? (readwriteweb.com)
• Operation Ghost Clicks Nabs DNSChanger Malware Ring (forbes.com)
• FBI’s Operation Ghost Click takes out operators of DNS Changer malware network (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
• FBI’s Operation Ghost Click Busts Operators of DNSChanger Malware (techie-buzz.com)
• DNSChanger and PROTECT IP: FBI hit and legislative miss (eset.com)