Kim Dotcom's gift to hackers behind Sony's PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox attacks has brought temporary relief but is a bad example in the long run.
Ο Kim Dotcom created one amazing Christmas fairytale. He bought the Lizard Squad to stop the distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on the Sony PlayStation and Xbox networks on Christmas Day. Thanks to Dotcom, Christmas was saved. Long live Kim Dotcom!
Everyone wins here, right? Players can play again. Lizard Squad gets 3.000 free coupons from Kim Dotcom for the crypto cloud storage service, Mega. Priced at $ 99 each, these coupons if purchased for $ 50, the Lizard Squad will receive $ 150.000. Of course, Kim Dotcom promotes the event in the media, to further enhance his exuberant profile.
No, not everyone.
Some criminals looking for her were rewarded caution for their criminal behavior. There has been a reinforcement of particular worldviews about how the information security industry works. In short, the takeaway is that crime pays. Rough. All of this of course can no doubt inspire others which is the last thing we need given that DDoS attacks have been steadily increasing in number and size in recent years.
Last month, independent news sites in Hong Kong reported DDoS attacks that reached 500 gigabits a second reported ZDNet.
“[It's] the biggest attack we've ever seen, and we've seen some of the biggest attacks the Internet has seen,” said Cloudflare's chief Matthew Prince in Forbes.
The Lizard Squad claims that their attacks on Sony and Microsoft reached 1,2 terabits per second - more than double the size of Hong Kong attacks. If this is true, it means that these guys are definitely smart. But their media interviews - we mentioned earlier that they seek attention - reveal what one can say as politely as possible.
"Microsoft and Sony are fucking retarded, literally monkeys behind computers," Lizard Squad told the Daily Dot. "They would have better luck if they actually hired someone who knew what they were doing. Like, if they went around prisons and hired people who were convicted for stuff like this, they would have a better chance at preventing attacks.”
“We have a group of people with really special abilities, and we have acquired access on some of the basic Internet routing equipment,” they told the Daily Dot.
"We have some devices connected to the submarine cables that facilitate the internet that connects the United States and Europe. We have access to some of the devices that are in the middle of the ocean, and give 100 gigabits per second. The Russian government has not carried out attacks of this magnitude either. "
The two most sorry about all this
First, these attacks are really a battle between two rival hackers, the Lizard Squad and The Finest Squad. As he said Polygon, this battle continues for a month. There is no noble competition here, just some young people are trying to prove they are as good as they claim.
This battle is a source of many DDoS attacks. According to Akamai's 3 2014 quarterly 34, an estimated 0% of DDXNUMXS attacks are targeted at the online entertainment industry.
"Online attacks in the entertainment industry are usually motivated by players who seek to gain a competitive advantage over other players and by malicious agents who seek to steal personal data from players. "In some cases, malicious agents fuel attacks to gain media attention or to tarnish the image of peer groups," said Akamai.
Second, the Lizard Squad thinks that what they are doing is perfectly normal. In an interview on BBC radio, it was reported that giving Mega vouchers to stop the attack was "dirty, and they looked greedy". That's what security companies do. "
So yes, Kim Dotcom, stopped the Christmas Day attacks, and the parents all over the world were and are grateful. But the future is coming and this probably won't end well.
