Cyber Attack Update: A Group Claimed Responsibility While Investigation Is On Going

By Jeff Thompson - 24 Oct '16 07:33AM

The recent cyber attack that shook the technology firms and the U.S. government have got a significant turn now. While the investigation is going on, a group of hackers has been claimed the responsibility of cyber meltdown. The attack which took place on Oct. 21 considered to be one of the major attacks in the recent times and getting more importance in the wake of cybersecurity issues being widely discussed in the ongoing presidential election campaign.

Members of "New World Hackers" claimed the responsibility of recent cyber attacks via the Twitter account. In the massive attack, the group crippled the networks of Twitter, PayPal, Spotify and Dyn Inc. They also created disruptions for CNN, Mashable, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Yelp etc., during the recent cyber attacks. The network outage started at East Coast U.S.A. and spread all across the country and to Europe, reports Reuters.

@NewWorldHacking is responsible for themassive ddos attack that almost shut down the internet anyother team claiming repsonsibility is lying

— ~#GhostSquadHackers (@GhostSquadHack) October 23, 2016

It is reported that the hackers were executing a Distributed Denial-of-service attack (DDoS) cyber attack. It is a way of making websites unavailable by making excessive traffic from various sources, reports 6abc. It has severely affected the network of Dyn and it confirmed that the recent cyber attacks were one of the biggest to its website.

The cyber attacks were carried out using web cams and digital recorders that were connected to the internet. A complex malware program called Mirai generated overwhelming connection requests to Dyn's customers, cited by The Guardian. Director of research at Flashpoint, Allison Nixon said that it was mainly due to the compromised digital video recorders and IP cameras that are made by a Chinese company called XiongMai Technologies.

"It is important to note that virtually all the products of a company become botnet and now causing cyber attacks in U.S.," Allison said. The products and components of XiongMai being used in many vendors' products, is making things more critical.

It is important to remember what Barack Obama said while he was speaking about the threats of Artificial Intelligence. "Don't worry about any machines ruling the world, but worry about the hostile actors who access systems," he said.