The Asian nation of Myanmar, still widely known as Burma, has been virtually taken of the Net by a sustained attack of unknonw origin.
Acording to analysis by Arbor Networks the cyber-warfare attack, which centred on the main Myanmar internet provider, the state-owned Ministry of Post and Telecommunications (PTT), has been going for several days and provided enough bogus traffic to swamp the relatively small links the country has to the Internet.
”We estimate the Myanmar DDoS is between 10-15 Gbps,” said Craig Labovitz of Arbor Networks, “several hundred times more than enough to overwhelm the country’s 45 Mbps T3 terrestrial and satellite links”
The attack includes many components such as TCP syn floods, and rst floods against multiple IP addresses within the PTT’s address blocks and is apparently coming in from a broad range of source addresses from twenty or more providers.
In the UK the Home Secretary Theresa May recently promised increased measures against cyber warfare, and funding for cyber defence was boosted in the budget, following warnings from the head of GCHQ that Britain faces “credible” cyber-attack threats.
The attack on Burma comes while Europe is holding a cyber security exercise designed to test its readiness for such an incident.
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says Huawei's flagship smartphone chip 'years behind' US technology, shows…
Cloud companies, business user groups say Broadcom price changes do not address their concerns, as…
Dating app Grindr sued over claims it shared sensitive user data, including HIV status, with…
Meta Platforms opens operating system behind Quest virtual reality headsets to third parties amidst competition…
European Commission may ban rewards feature in recently launched TikTok Lite that it calls 'toxic…
US House of Representatives passes new bill combining TikTok measures with foreign aid, may face…
View Comments
Alan Bentley, SVP International at Lumension, commented:
"Harnessing tools traditionally used to carry out cyber crime as a means for executing politically motivated cyber attacks opens new doors for political campaigners. Defacement of websites, denial of service attacks and the exploitation of government security flaws have become increasingly popular as political activists and disgruntled groups take to cyberspace rather than the streets to air their views and cause disruption. Hacks like Cash Gordon seemed mischeveous, a little bit cheeky. But in actual fact, the rise of this trend also the opens doors to more sinister campaigns, with the potential to cause real damage or destruction.
"The most notable thing about the reported attack in Mynamar is that it's not an act of 'hactivism' to broadcast a message and force people to listen. Instead, it aims to prevent freedom of speech and silence a country in the lead up to a significant moment in its political history. The web is an outstanding and powerful tool, but when control slips into the wrong hands, the potential implications can be frightening. We see this with the rise of attacks such as Stuxnet which directly threaten real-world infrastructure and groups like the Iranian Cyber Army making malicious online tools such as botnets readily available to anyone that's willing to pay for them.
"With governments around the world grappling to come to terms with the reality of cyber warefare as it is, this attack represents the pressing need for a new take on our approach to security. With hacker techniques at the most sophisticated they have ever been, simply waiting to find out if something is 'bad' before it enters the network no longer cuts the mustard. Intelligence is crucial in the battle to protect government and corporate infrastructures from the work of cyber criminals and 'hacktivists'."