DDos attacks highlight lack of online devices’ security, expert
Posted October 21, 2016 5:19 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – An internet security expert says consumers should demand better security on their smart devices as West coast internet users feel the effects of Friday’s eastern cyber-attacks.
The distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the New Hampshire-based company Dyn Inc’s servers clogged the tubes to access many popular sites like Twitter, Netflix, and Sony’s PlayStation Network across North America, and even Europe. Like trying to cram too many people through a door, a DDoS slows down or prevents people from accessing sites by clogging the server’s lines with requests.
“Sometimes if those websites, which are from a proximity point of view closer to us, are busy, sometimes there’s an occasional shout out to the eastern based server, so that’s why we’re seeing a little bit of issues (in Vancouver,” Cyber CS’s Dominic Vogel says.
Though a DDoS is a very old form of online attack and doesn’t personally leave any damage, its side effects can devastate businesses and individuals who rely on the internet and World Wide Web.
Such attacks highlight both the resilience and fragility of web and internet technology, according to Vogel. Users on the west coast can still access most sites with little to no disruption, but a lot of the backbone protocols websites use were written many years ago and do not have security at the forefront.
Vogel says DDoS attacks are becoming stronger and able to affect larger swaths of the internet in part because there are so many more devices that access the internet, like smart watches, toys, fridges, home monitoring systems and even cars, that hackers can access.
“Makers of these Internet of Things devices really need to start taking security seriously, and as consumers, we should be demanding security be built into any product that we buy,” Vogel says.
