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FBI: Hacktivist DDoS attacks had a minimal effect on important organizations

Hacktivist DDoS attack

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), organized hacktivist organizations’ distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) operations. But the distributed DDoS has a negligible effect on their target systems.

This occurs because law enforcement targets public-facing infrastructure like websites rather than the actual services. This resulted in less disruption, as the law enforcement agency said in a private sector letter released today.

The FBI has learned of pro-Russian hacktivist groups using DDoS assaults to target critical infrastructure corporations in conjunction with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the agency said.

Although hacktivists frequently promote and exaggerate the severity of the attacks on social media. These attacks are typically opportunistic in nature and, with DDoS mitigation techniques, have little operational impact on victims.

As a result, DDoS attacks frequently have a higher psychological impact than service disruption.

Such organizations, such as financial institutions, emergency services, airports, government, health, and medical facilities, are frequently targeted by high-profile or crucial infrastructure organizations.

Hacktivists want to improve their credibility. And falsely assert greater influence or disruption than what transpired by pulling down their websites.

DDoS attacks on critical and govt organizations in the U.S.

A recent instance of such an incident was an attack on numerous important airport websites around the United States, according to the pro-Russian hacktivist group KillNet.

DDoS assaults crippled the servers hosting these websites. Making it impossible for users to make reservations for airport services or obtain flight status information.

During the incident, notable examples of airport websites that were unavailable included:

Although these DDoS assaults had no effect on aircraft. They had a negative impact on an important economic sector and delayed related services.

The same organization also attacked websites belonging to the US government in Mississippi, Kentucky, and Colorado the week prior, with varying degrees of success, briefly taking some of them offline.

After its attacks against the U.S. Treasury in early October were stopped before harming the agency’s infrastructure, Killnet claimed to have taken down CISA’s Protected Critical Infrastructure Information Management System website on Friday.

A joint piece of advice from CISA, the FBI, and MS-ISAC was released a week ago providing information on how to lessen the risk and impact of DDoS assaults.

Reference

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