New Mirai Botnet Slams US College With 54-Hour DDoS Attack

What appears to be a new version of the Mirai malware was behind a massive DDoS attack that targeted an unnamed US college and lasted for 54 hours straight, reports cyber-security firm Incapsula, who was providing DDoS mitigation service for the affected college. Sean Newman, Director at Corero Network Security commented below.

Sean Newman, Director at Corero Network Security:

“We’ve become used to hearing about massive saturating DDoS attacks in the news and associating that with the primary way in which the DDoS threat landscape is evolving.  There’s no denying the pandemic levels that those types of attacks are reaching however, this latest protracted attack on a US College highlights the other side of DDoS attacks.  Attackers have figured out that, in most cases, there is no need to saturate the internet feeds of their targets, to be successful.  Some background research, combined with careful reconnaissance, often means they can cause just as much disruption with a well-crafted surgical DDoS attack.

“And these types of surgical attacks have numerous benefits for the attackers; they don’t need to use as much of their valuable resources to launch the attacks, the attacks come in under the radar of less sophisticated legacy DDoS protection solutions and the target’s internet connection is left open during the attack for other nefarious activities to take place, whilst the DDoS distraction is in progress.

“This goes to demonstrate that any organisation which relies on its internet presence needs to be taking DDoS protection much more seriously and making use of the latest always-on DDoS protection solutions, either directly or, via an ISP that can deliver that protection as-a-service.”