Cyber experts and intelligence officials told NBC News it was too early to determine who was responsible for the cyber attacks that caused massive internet outages across the U.S. Friday, with some saying their analysis pointed to Russia and others saying it could just be “internet vandalism.” The three “denial of service,” or DDoS, attacks, hit at about 7 a.m. , noon and 4 p.m. Eastern Time, knocking out such websites as Vox, Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, PayPal and Reddit. The attacks used the “internet of things,” meaning “smart” household appliances like DVRs, routers, printers and cameras that are linked to the web, to create “botnets” that overloaded websites by sending them more than 150,000 requests for information per second. Officials said the attacks were largely aimed at internet infrastructure linked to one company rather than specific websites. Nearly all of those attacked were clients of Dyn, a firm that provides domain name system services and other internet infrastructure services. However, according to one official, there was also targeting of some individual websites. “We have begun monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed (Domain Name System) infrastructure,” Dyn said on its website at 11:52 a.m. ET. “Our engineers…
Continue Reading: Who Shut Down the U.S. Internet Friday?
