Just a few days ago, a world-record-breaking cyber attack against GitHub took place. However, this new achievement was surpassed rather quickly: now, a 1.7 Tbps attack against an unnamed US company holds the world record for the strongest DDoS attack. Without any doubts, other companies expressed concerns over their own security and wondered whether hackers could use the Memcached attack strategy against them.
Memcached DDoS attacks can be stopped
Luckily, security researchers have introduced a so-called “kill switch”, helping companies and organizations prevent Memcached DDoS attacks. Finding a prevention method for these attacks was a very urgent matter as an unidentified source had published a proof-of-concept exploit code for Memcached amplification. With this information, even wannabe hackers could have attacked various websites and interrupted their services.
Researchers from Corero are the ones people should be thanking for the released “kill switch”. They also revealed that the Mamcached attacks could steal data from their targets and even corrupt data. Consequences of such attacks might be extremely difficult to handle. Therefore, the found “kill switch” was welcomed with open arms. According to the Corero Network Security, victims of DDoS attacks can prevent amplification by entering the following commands:
“shutdown\r\n”, or “flush_all\r\n”
For those who worry that the “kill switch” can help people only in theory, we can rest assure that Corero researchers have properly examined the technique. According to them, the prevention tactic works without any hitches and should stop all Memcached DDoS attacks. We cannot stress out the importance of this “kill switch” as these unique DDoS attacks can not only shut down a service for some time. In addition to this classic feature of DDoS attacks, Memcached techniques allow hackers to commence data theft.
Memcached DDoS attacks can help hackers steal data from various companies
During a Memcached DDoS attack, a lot of information could be stolen. For instance, researchers have emphasized that hackers are mostly interested in confidential information. Therefore, they are most likely aiming to steal database records, emails, website customer information and etc. Surprisingly, this data theft can be done after hackers use an uncomplicated debug command.
You might ask: how does the “kill switch” work? Corero researchers explain that the technique send the malicious command back to an attacking server. Furthermore, the “kill switch” does not appear to have any side-effects. Lastly, we simply want to appreciate the hard work of Corero Network Security and hope that the organization will continue on helping people prevent DDoS attacks.
Source: corero.com.
