The media really needs to get his head around this stuff 🤬
BY:
Antonio Greco
Cyber/Data Science Analyst
PROJECT COUNSEL MEDIA
11 October 2022 (Washington, DC) – Yesterday, Russian-speaking hackers disrupted the websites of multiple U.S. airports through distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, Axios’ Jacob Knutson reports. No actual flight disruptions from the attacks were reported, but the downed websites were likely an inconvenience for people seeking flight information or booking services.
DDoS attacks work by overwhelming a targeted server, service or network with a flood of internet traffic and either forcing websites offline or making them very slow to respond to legitimate traffic.
The affected airports included Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and New York City’s LaGuardia Airport, according to reports in CNN and ABC. U.S. military intelligence, noted this was done by Killnet, a well-known pro-Russia hacker group, which posted a list of major U.S. airport websites on its Telegram account telling its 91,000 subscribers:
“The list below is for you! We invite everyone to commit DDOS on the civilian network infrastructure of the United States of America!”
U.S. intel said it listed airports, hospitals and health care systems, weather monitoring centers, and metro systems as targets.
Killnet took responsibility for knocking multiple state government websites offline around the U.S. last week, CNN reports.
Most DDoS attacks are considered unsophisticated and viewed as attempts to garner headlines or cause slight but annoying disruptions to daily life. They’re different from the more destructive attacks government officials have been warning companies about for months.
But, as usual, the U.S. media went crazy with dire descriptions of a “cyber attack on infrastructure”. Russian kids DDoSing airport brochure websites is not an attack on critical infrastructure. It is having no real impact. The goal is to generate panicky headlines that oversell Russian capabilities, just as the media has since 2017.
Every day on the Internet brings hundreds of breaches, ransomware attacks, DDoSes, and widespread fraud schemes. This is just the reality of our connected, vulnerable world. Highlighting the 117th most important adversarial action today plays into the hands of RU propagandists.
It reminds me of that old xkcd comic:
