The aim of a DDoS attack is to overwhelm an online service with traffic from multiple sources, rendering it unavailable. Dyn said attacks were coming from millions of internet addresses, making it one of the largest attacks ever seen. The same Mirai malware was used in September to launch what was then described as the biggest DDoS attack ever on Krebs’ website, Krebs on Security. Experts had warned of increasingly sophisticated botnets – in essence, a weaponised combination of malware and as many as 100,000 hijacked individual devices – just days before Friday’s attack. A tweet from WikiLeaks at 5pm Friday New York time implied that its supporters were behind the attack.

Source: The Guardian October 22, 2016 05:47 UTC