[ISN] Size of DDoS group 'doesn't matter', security agency says

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2010 01:16:45 -0600 (CST)
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/security-threats/2010/12/16/size-of-ddos-group-doesnt-matter-security-agency-says-40091193/

By Jack Clark 
@mappingbabel
ZDNet UK
16 December, 2010

The number of people needed to launch a successful denial-of-service 
attack has been overestimated by the press, according to the European 
Network and Information Security Agency.

Attacks such as those by pro-Wikileaks groups need significantly fewer 
participants than has been reported, the European Network and 
Information Security Agency (Enisa) said on Tuesday. Visa was taken down 
by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack from roughly 500 
machines, Ulf Bergstrom, Enisa's spokesman, told ZDNet UK on Thursday.

"An attack can be constituted by much fewer machines [than was thought], 
and that is quite concerning and quite an important point to make," 
Bergstrom said.

DDoS attacks against Wikileaks, Visa, PayPal and various government 
sites all demonstrated that "size doesn't matter: the number of 
computers used in the attacks was relatively small (in the hundreds). 
Some press reports claim over six times the real number, which is 
indicative of the unreliability of information about botnets", Enisa 
wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

[...]


___________________________________________________________      
Tegatai Managed Colocation: Four Provider Blended
Tier-1 Bandwidth, Fortinet Universal Threat Management,
Natural Disaster Avoidance, Always-On Power Delivery 
Network, Cisco Switches, SAS 70 Type II Datacenter. 
Find peace of mind, Defend your Critical Infrastructure.
http://www.tegataiphoenix.com/
Received on Thu Dec 16 2010 - 23:16:45 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Fri Dec 17 2010 - 07:34:38 PST