Page 89 - CDM Cyber Warnings February 2014

Successful businesses can share similar paths and anyone with an Internet
experiences. Many times a special combination of passion
and innovation leads to rapid growth and frenetic activity. connection and a
A fly by the seat of your pants and do it all for the love of
the game type of attitude. At a certain point, it becomes grievance to become an
obvious that real money can be made, and things change.
There comes a real business plan, a clear strategy is attacker”
developed, and real targets, both customers and
competitors, are identified. Investment, communication
In 2010, things changed dramatically, and permanently.
and collaboration are emphasized in order to improve
With the rise of hacktivism, an explosion of online tools
research and development. A serious and deliberate
has enabled anyone with an Internet connection and a
approach to recruiting and attracting top talent is
grievance to become an attacker. Have a bad service
implemented. As a result, these organizations flourish and
experience at a store� Get in an argument with someone
become incredibly successful with millions in profit and
during an online game� You can easily find a DDoS attack
great future prospects.
service online and for a few dollars, get your revenge. This
fundamentally changes the risk landscape for enterprises.
This is not the story of a successful business, but the
Today, any business, for any reason, any real or perceived
professional cyber crime community that enterprise
offense or affiliation, can become a target.
network and security organizations are dealing with on a
At the high end, the most skilled attackers identified new
daily basis.
targets and techniques. No longer did DDoS mean a pure
�flood attack�. Attackers are now targeting the applications
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have been
that power the business. In order to accomplish this, rather
front page news for several years now, and they are a great
than a tsunami of traffic, they can disguise their attacks to
example this evolution. For over a decade DDoS was
look like legitimate traffic, and bypass traditional network
considered a relatively basic attack. High bandwidth
defenses. With these weaknesses identified, high-end
�floods� that attempted to overwhelm an Internet
attackers matured, marketed and sold their services,
connection with traffic. Send ten gigs to a five gig pipe, for
sometimes to businesses looking to attack the competition,
instance, and you have a basic plumbing problem as we
and other times potentially to nation states or politically
say. DDoS was used by attackers for bragging rights and
affiliated groups.
thought of by businesses as a nuisance that should be

handled in the cloud by their service provider. Service
providers responded to customer demand by creating
managed security services that offered �clean pipes � free
of DDoS traffic.

“With the rise of

hacktivism, an

explosion of online

tools has enabled

CYBER DEFENSE MAGAZINE - ANNUAL EDITION 89