Massive Internet outage at East Coast Due to Hacked Home Devices

People living on the East Coast experienced trouble accessing websites like Spotify Netflix, Twitter, Reddit, and Amazon. This is after cyber criminals attacked Dyn, a company that provides technology services to some of the most well-known Internet's destinations.

During the first few hours, experts were clueless as to who is behind the attack.  A computer security firm later confirmed that the attack involved Mirai, which scours the web for devices with factory-default usernames and passwords.

DDos attacks are normal but this one involving the East Coast proved that hackers are becoming more powerful and sophisticated as attacks are now primarily aimed at internet infrastructure providers. On the other hand, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the hacking incident and is trying to distinguish potential causes such as nation-state attack and other criminal activities.

The hacking furthermore stirred up some political tensions, with the US accusing Russia of being behind the attack. To note, during the third and the final presidential debate, Ms. Clinton has directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin, of carrying out the attack. Dyn later confirmed that the onslaught came from millions of internet addresses, which made it one of the biggest cyber-attacks ever.

Experts, however, were able to counter the attack eleven hours after the incident took place. They were able to restore their service back to normal and users were able to access the affected websites once again. At exactly 6:17 p.m. ET Friday, Dyn has released a statement on their website saying that their service has been restored. Kyle York, Dyn's chief strategy officer, confirmed that incidents such as this were normal "It's a very smart attack. We start to mitigate, they react. It keeps on happening every time. We're learning, though," On the other hand, it is still unknown where exactly the onslaught originated.