Waves of cyberattacks brought down several popular websites Friday, leaving millions of users without access and the Department of Homeland Security investigating the precise cause.
Here are seven things to know about the cyberattacks.
1. The attack, which is believed to be a coordinated effort, targeted a single Domain Name Server provider called Dyn. Dyn's servers monitor and reroute internet traffic. The attack affected a range of sites, including Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, Reddit, The New York Times, Constant Contact, Etsy, SoundCloud and Airbnb. Users on the East Coast were first affected by the outages, although the hackers moved westward by clogging servers with phony traffic until they completely crashed.
2. This type of attack is known as a distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS. Although no information is obtained with DDoS attacks, they create major frustration. The DDoS attack affected Dyn's infrastructure that supports internet connections, meaning the attack did not affect websites themselves. Instead, it blocked or slowed users from gaining access to sites.
3. Manchester, N.H.-based Dyn first reported site outages at roughly 7:10 a.m. EST. Dyn restored service two hours later, but a second attack hit around noon EST, this time affecting the West Coast as well.
4. DDoS attacks often involve a network of "zombie" machines called botnets. This is a network of personal computers in homes or offices infected with malicious code which, upon the request of a hacker, start flooding a web server with data, according to Bloomberg. If tens or hundreds of thousands fire phony data at the same time, it's enough to impair even the most sophisticated of servers.
5. Dyn's chief strategist, Kyle York, told The New York Times, "[T]his was not your everyday DDoS attack." In general, DDoS attacks are on the rise. A trends report from Verisign showed a 75 percent increase in DDoS strikes from April through June 2016 compared with the same period last year. "It’s a total wild, wild west out there," Mr. York said.
6. Mr. York says the uptick in DDoS is driving many companies to push at least a portion of their infrastructure to cloud computing networks, which decentralizes their systems and decreases the likelihood of attack.
7. A deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security said the agency was investigating "all potential causes" of the attack on Friday, according to The New York Times.