[Benjamin]

Massive Internet Outage Could Be a Sign of Things to Come

Hackers have shown how they could take down the Internet.
by Jamie Condliffe, October 21, 2016,
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/6...hings-to-come/

DYN: http://dyn.com/about/

The Dyn attack was clearly more than a test, and its severity certainly fits with Schneier’s hypothesis that someone, somewhere is trying to learn how to cause widespread disruption. The question of who is behind attacks like this, though, remains unanswered. Criminals are unlikely to be motivated by such attacks, as there’s little to gain from them other than widespread disruption. That lends some weight to Schneier’s suggestion that a large nation state, such as China or Russia, could be developing large-scale DDoS capabilities. Though it’s impossible to say for sure.

But as the Dyn incident reveals, it still takes time for DNS hosts to recover from attacks. If hackers were to take down several servers at once, the effect could be even more pronounced—a threat that could yet be realized.