Google pulled nearly 300 malicious apps from the Google Play Store this week, after a team of researchers from several internet companies discovered that they were all hijacking phones’ power into a massive international botnet spanning more than 100 countries. [More]
ddos
Lawmakers Seek Investigation Into Alleged Attack On FCC Commenting System
By 8.18.17
When the FCC’s new leadership officially began the process of dismantling net neutrality rules, it didn’t come as much of a surprise when an overwhelming amount of traffic crashed the Commission’s public commenting system. After all, it happened a few years ago when these rules were being written. What did surprise people was the FCC’s claim — made without providing any additional information — that the system failure was not the result of too many people trying to comment, but a malicious attack. The FCC has never fully explained how it reached that conclusion, and now some lawmakers want to know why. [More]
FCC Blames “Attacks” For Comment System Crash Following John Oliver Story
By 5.8.17 — Updated: 5.10.17
As we mentioned in our earlier story about John Oliver’s latest call-to-arms in defense of net neutrality, the Federal Communications Commission’s public commenting system was acting a bit shaky. The FCC now claims that this crash wasn’t due to a bona fide rush to file comments, but to malicious attacks. [More]
Trouble With Twitter, Reddit, Or The Rest Of The Internet Today? It’s Not Just You.
By 10.21.16 — Updated: 11.1.16
Update: Dyn reports that as of about 9:30 a.m., service has been restored and affected sites and services should start returning to normal. However, as of about 11:50 another round appears to have begun, with even more trouble hitting around 1:30 ET. Read on for more about the scope of the issue. [More]
PlayStation Network Crashes, Hackers Make Bomb Threat Against Plane Carrying Sony Exec
By 8.25.14
After claiming responsibility for a denial-of-service attack that took down the Sony PlayStation network, a group of hackers tweeted that there was a bomb onboard an American Airlines flight carrying the president of Sony Online Entertainment, John Smedley. That plane was diverted, and all passengers on it safely removed. [More]
Meetup.com Would Rather Stay Offline Than Pay $300 Ransom To Hackers
By 3.3.14
Where is Liam Neeson à la Taken (and don’t forget Taken 2: Someone Else Gets Taken) when you need someone to handle a kidnapping? Or in Meetup.com’s current scenario, a sitenapping? The site has been down since Thursday, citing a wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. But in a blog today, the company said it’s not going to pay a $300 ransom to the hackers responsible to get its site back. [More]
