News overview
The start of the year saw the appearance of various new tools in the arsenal of DDoS-attack masterminds. In early February, for instance, the new botnet Cayosin, assembled from elements of Qbot, Mirai, and other publicly available malware, swam into view. Cybersecurity experts were intrigued less by the mosaic structure and frequent updating of its set of exploited vulnerabilities than by the fact that it was advertised (as a DDoS service) not on the dark web, but through YouTube. What’s more, it is up for sale on Instagram (botnetters are clearly making the most of the opportunities afforded by social media). In tracing the cybercriminals’ accounts, the researchers stumbled upon other malware and botnets as well, including the already discovered Yowai.
Mid-March turned up another find in the shape of a new version of Mirai, geared towards attacking business devices. The malware is now able to “botnetize” not only access points, routers, and network cameras, but wireless presentation and digital signage systems, too.
Despite all this, the number of observed high-profile attacks using new and not-so-new botnets was not that high. At the end of winter, the University of Albany (UAlbany) in the US came under assault: during the February 5 – March 1 period, 17 attacks were made on it, downing the university servers for at least five minutes. Data belonging to students and staff was not affected, but some services were unavailable; the head of IT security at UAlbany believes that the university was specifically targeted.
In early ..
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