{"id":97366,"date":"2016-10-27T09:45:25","date_gmt":"2016-10-27T13:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=97366"},"modified":"2016-10-27T07:15:05","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T11:15:05","slug":"cyber-security-five-firms-working-to-squash-cyber-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2016\/10\/cyber-security-five-firms-working-to-squash-cyber-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyber Security: Five Firms Working to Squash Cyber Attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"
October 27, 2016<\/div>
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By WallStreetDaily.com<\/u><\/a> \"Cyber<\/p>\n

Angry at a journalist for writing mean things about you? Trying to make ends meet and need a blackmail scheme? Get your own DDoS botnet on the internet today!<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

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Whodunit?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the multibillion-dollar question this week after hackers took down the internet on October 21 with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on one of the largest Domain Name System (DNS) service providers in the world.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s responsible is indeed a compelling mystery.<\/p>\n

A more important and immediate consideration is how to protect your network against hackers.<\/p>

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Another is which companies stand to profit from the effort to ramp up security in the aftermath of such a high-profile event.<\/p>\n

Below, we discuss two small-cap stocks and three startups that figure to benefit from rising awareness of DDoS attacks and the importance of cyber security.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we know so far about what happened last Friday.<\/p>\n

According to a statement released by the company, at about 7:00 a.m. (ET), New Hampshire-based DynDNS \u201cbegan experiencing a DDoS attack\u201d concentrated on its East Coast servers.<\/p>\n

Dyn\u2019s network team resolved the threat and restored service within a couple hours.<\/p>\n

Dyn experienced a second round of attacks \u2014 \u201cmore global in nature\u201d \u2014 at around noon, but managed to turn it back within an hour.<\/p>\n

A third attempt at taking down one of the leading internet performance management companies in the United States was thwarted with no impact on customer or user experience.<\/p>\n

According to cyber-intelligence firm Flashpoint, unknown hackers used the botnet malware Mirai to carry out the attack.<\/p>\n

Notes Flashpoint: \u201cMirai malware targets Internet of Things (IoT) devices like routers, digital video records (DVRs), and webcams\/security cameras, enslaving vast numbers of these devices into a botnet, which is then used to conduct DDoS attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flashpoint was able to conclude that \u201cat least some of the devices used in the Dyn DNS attacks\u201d are DVRs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dyn \u201cobserved tens of millions of discrete IP addresses associated with the Mirai botnet that were part of the attack.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Brian Krebs, of the highly esteemed and widely followed Krebs on Security blog<\/strong><\/a>, reported late on October 21: \u201cAllison Nixon, director of research at Flashpoint, said the botnet used in today\u2019s ongoing attack is built on the backs of hacked IoT devices \u2014 mainly compromised digital video recorders (DVRs) and IP cameras \u2014 made by a Chinese high-tech company called\u00a0Hangzhou Xiongmai Technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krebs, a former tech reporter for The Washington Post<\/em> and the author of New York Times<\/em> bestseller Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime \u2014 From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door<\/em>, suffered a similar attack in mid-September.<\/p>\n

The October 21 attack on Dyn came \u201cjust hours after DYN [sic] researcher Doug Madory presented a talk on DDoS attacks in Dallas, Texas at a meeting of the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG).\u201d<\/p>\n

The September 20 attack on KrebsOnSecurity.com occurred \u201cjust hours after\u201d Krebs published a story, \u201cSpreading the DDoS Disease and Selling the Cure<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d a collaboration with Dyn\u2019s Madory.<\/p>\n

HackForums user \u201cAnna_Senpai\u201d has been identified as the perpetrator of the September 20 attack. On September 30, Anna_Senpai released Mirai\u2019s source code online.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince this release,\u201d reports Flashpoint, \u201ccopycat hackers have used the malware to create botnets of their own in order to launch DDoS attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hangzhou Xiongmai has issued a recall for its IoT devices implicated in the DDoS attack.<\/p>\n

As for the answer to the question with which we lead today\u2019s issue, it\u2019s complicated.<\/p>\n

These hackers may have been motivated by a desire to silence certain folks about their activities.<\/p>\n

Security for IoT devices is ridiculously poor, providing easy \u201cins\u201d for attackers, be they \u201ccensors\u201d to silence critics or blackmailers looking to cash in on captive businesses or individuals.<\/p>\n

The thing about a DDoS is that it\u2019s not a particularly sophisticated attack. It\u2019s just a lot of phony traffic that makes it harder for legitimate users of a website to access it.<\/p>\n

And now Mirai is readily accessible.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another scary fact:<\/p>\n

According to researchers with cyber-security software provider Imperva Inc. (IMPV), you can buy a DDoS attack on the internet for as little as $5 an hour via the online professional services marketplace Fiverr.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

These things used to be available only on the \u201cdark web.\u201d<\/p>\n

Things have changed.<\/p>\n

It might make sense to keep some things \u201coff the internet\u201d as a matter of security. Don\u2019t count on that, though. Indeed, the search for absolute security, as Dwight Eisenhower once noted, is a path to bankruptcy.<\/p>\n

We can take steps to protect ourselves, however. And we can identify companies doing that sort of work \u2014 not only to engage their services, but to profit from their success as well.<\/p>\n

Imperva is a $1.2 billion market cap with nearly 5,000 customers. Its cloud-based Incapsula platform is credited with stopping some of the biggest DDoS attacks ever recorded. The company is a potential takeover target, with bigger fish such as Cisco Systems Inc.<\/strong> (CSCO) and International Business Machines Corp.<\/strong> (IBM) reportedly circling it.<\/p>\n

NetScout<\/strong> (NTCT) acquired Arbor Networks, which previously partnered with Cisco, for $2.6 billion in 2015 to beef up its network performance monitoring and security capabilities. Arbor says it serves 90% of the world\u2019s Tier 1 internet service providers and claims \u201cvisibility into one-third of global internet traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several startups are also poised to capture new business based on the never-ending search for cyber security.<\/p>\n

Nexusguard<\/strong><\/a>, founded in San Francisco in 2008, touts itself as offering \u201cthe world\u2019s first cloud DDoS monitoring service.\u201d It produces copious reports and data about DDoS attacks<\/strong><\/a>. Note: DDoS companies top the hit list for hackers.<\/p>\n

Cloudflare<\/strong><\/a>, founded in 2009, has so far received $182 million in funding. It claims more than 2 million users of its website protection\/performance software<\/p>\n

Finally, Florida-based Zenedge<\/strong><\/a> was founded in 2014. With $13.7 million in funding, its cloud-based DDoS prevention solution, which employs artificial intelligence, is attracting significant venture interest.<\/p>\n

Its \u201cpatent-pending proprietary machine-learning algorithms inspect web traffic in real time to identify threats dynamically and update security settings accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Money Quote<\/h3>\n

\u201cOne person\u2019s \u2018paranoia\u2019 is another person\u2019s \u2018engineering redundancy.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Marcus J. Ranum<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Smart Investing,<\/p>\n

David Dittman
\nEditorial Director, Wall Street Daily<\/i><\/p>\n

The post Cyber Security: Five Firms Working to Squash Cyber Attacks<\/a> appeared first on Wall Street Daily<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By WallStreetDaily.com Angry at a journalist for writing mean things about you? Trying to make ends meet and need a blackmail scheme? Get your own DDoS botnet on the internet today! Whodunit? That\u2019s the multibillion-dollar question this week after hackers took down the internet on October 21 with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97366"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97379,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97366\/revisions\/97379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}