[Benjamin]

Internet outage takes down Twitter, Netflix, PayPal and many of the web's most visited websites

Services like PlayStation Network were caught up in the problems
Andrew Griffin, Tim Walker | @_andrew_griffin | 21.10.2016
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...-a7374506.html

A major Internet outage affected many of the world's biggest online firms on Friday, with websites including Twitter, Netflix, Spotify, Reddit, PayPal and eBay down for long stretches. Other services such as PlayStation Network also appeared to be hit by the outage. Google and Facebook were unaffected.

The widespread disruption was the result of a coordinated assault on some of the underlying infrastructure that powers the Internet. Dyn, one of several companies responsible for hosting the crucial web directory known as the Domain Name System (DNS), suffered a sustained so-called “distributed denial of service” (DDoS) attack, leading many people intermittently to lose access to specific sites or to the Internet entirely.

A DDoS attack means hackers hijack vast numbers of internet-connected devices to swamp a victim’s website with so much junk traffic that it is unable to cope. Dyn, based in New Hampshire, said the attack began shortly after 12pm BST. Twitter, Netflix et al were not directly targeted, but the attack on Dyn – which reportedly serves around 30 Fortune 500 companies – affected users’ access to those sites.

“This was not your everyday DDoS attack,” he told the newspaper, whose own website was affected by the incident. “The number and types of attacks, the duration of attacks and the complexity of these attacks are all on the rise,” Mr York warned.{Kyle York = Dyn’s chief strategist}

While DDoS attacks “do not cause permanent damage,” Mr Orans explained, they can temporarily affect communications, sow a sense of chaos and in some cases cause economic effects, for example by attacking retailers during a sale season. “It’s a temporary disruption to make a point,” he said. “But it’s highly inconvenient.” {Lawrence Orans = a research vice president at Gartner specialising in web security and DDoS attacks}