Massive Cyber Attack Knocks Down Major Websites Including Twitter, Reddit, NY Times and More

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Dozens of major internet websites are currently undergoing a massive DDoS attack that has almost crippled the internet, western media is reporting.

It is said that a major DNS service called Dyn is being attacked that has blocked the access to websites like including:

  • Twitter,
  • Amazon,
  • SoundCloud,
  • New York Times,
  • Business Insider,
  • Netflix,
  • Github,
  • Spotify,
  • Heroku
  • Shopify,
  • Boston Globe,
  • Airbnb,
  • Reddit,
  • Freshbooks,
  • Vox Media properties and others.

Dyn — along with other DNS servers — act as layer of IP resolvers for URLs we type. So for instance if you type ProPakistani.PK, its the DNS server that resolves this domain name and returns an IP address that’s shown to users.

If DNS layer is attacked, it becomes impossible for URLs to be resolved and hence websites become inaccessible.

What’s DDoS Attack:

Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) is a mechanism in which dumb data is thrown at a computer in a manner that the computer or resource becomes unavailable for other legitimate users.

Entire Internet has Become Sluggish

Even those websites that aren’t directly targeted are currently responding slow. This slowness is due to network dependencies and routing processes that involve components that are under attack.

Dyn said that it was attacked few hours ago, however, services were recovered quickly. Then a new, more serious, attack was launched almost half an hour ago (Around 10:15 PM Pakistan Time) that completely knocked down the access to the service, and ultimately many dozen websites have become inaccessible.

Dyn posted below update just minutes ago (Around 11PM Pakistani Time):

Our engineers continue to investigate and mitigate several attacks aimed against the Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure.

DDoS attack is reportedly targeted towards US servers — mainly throughout east cost — and that’s where the main damage has been done. Servers in Asia and Europe are to remain less impacted during the time.

Early reports are saying that this is one of the largest DDoS attacks in the history, which is still ongoing.


  • Thanks for the instant reporting.
    Yes my site is also taking long to resolve in several regions. I’ve just subscribed a firewall service to keep the site secure, hope they are not under the attack :p

  • The white house called it a criminal act. They’ll blame North Korea and specially Russia. Remember the RT website bank account case!! And they also blame Russia for there involvement in the US elections..

    • That makes sense. Whomsoever West accuses just know that they are behind it to achieve certain objectives and as you rightly pointed out RT bank account case it was a political decision conveyed by Washington to it’s vassal state Britain to stop RT because it was exposing Western World.

  • Use the word ‘server’ instead of computer if you want to tell what exactly a DDoS attack.

  • For the peeps who don’t know how DNS system works. Here is a useful reading:

    —————–
    Computers don’t use names to find each other. They use IP addresses. Names are only for us humans to be able to find crap.

    When you type in a server name, domain name or URL into a computer, the very first thing it does is lookup the IP address that corresponds with the name. Think of it like a big phone book for the internet. That giant phone book for the internet is called DNS (Domain Name Service). There are millions of DNS servers out on the internet and they all work together to look up the IP address for you. They also cache that lookup so that it is faster the next time.

    When I type Gizmodo.com into my browser and hit enter, my computer, the following happens

    1- My computer queries my cable company’s DNS server.
    2- My Cable Company’s DNS server looks up which other DNS server is the authoritative DNS server for Gizmodo.com by querying the Root DNS servers on the internet.
    3- The root DNS servers tell my Cable Companies DNS server to contact the DNS servers that host Gizmodo.com
    4- My Cable Company’s DNS server then asks the DNS server hosting Gizmodod.com for the IP address of Gizmodo.com
    5- My Cable company’s DNS server then returns the IP address (in this case 151.101.193.34) back to my machine, and my machine now knowing the IP address goes out and finds the website.

    Now if my neighbor goes to Gizmodo.com a few minutes later and the cable company DNS server skips steps 2-4 because it already knows the IP and just returns the IP without looking it up.

    All of that happens in a matter of milliseconds. If that lookup is broken, you are going to have a hard time browsing the internet.

    TL:DR DNS is like the phonebook for internet IP addresses. Computers use it to look up the IP address of machines by name.


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