Understanding KillNet and Recent Waves of DDoS Attacks - Michael Smith - ESW #357

In the days when Mirai emerged and took down DynDNS, along with what seemed like half the Internet, DDoS was as active a topic in the headlines as it was behind the scenes (check out Andy Greenberg's amazing story on Mirai on Wired). We don't hear about DDoS attacks as much anymore. What happened?

Well, they didn't go away. DDoS attacks are a more common and varied tool of cybercriminals than ever. Today, Michael Smith is going to catch us up on the state of DDoS attacks in 2024, and we'll focus particularly on one cybercrime actor, KillNet.

Segment Resources:

• Understanding DDoS Attacks: What is a DDoS Attack and How Does it Work? - I know the title makes this blog post sound rather basic, but it will get you up to speed on all the latest DDoS types, actors, and terminology pretty quickly!
• What is An Application-Layer DDoS Attack, and How Do I Defend Against Them?
• 2023 DDoS Statistics and Trends
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killnet

This week, Tyler and Adrian discuss Cyera's $300M Series C, which lands them a $1.4B valuation! But is that still a unicorn? Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures, who coined the term back in 2013, recently wrote a piece celebrating the 10th anniversary of the term, and revisiting what it means. We HIGHLY recommend checking it out: https://www.cowboy.vc/news/welcome-back-to-the-unicorn-club-10-years-later

They discuss a few other companies that have raised funding or just come out of stealth, including Scrut Automation, Allure Security, TrojAI, Knostic, Prompt Armor.

They discuss Eclipsium's binary analysis tooling, and what the future of fully automated security analysis could look like.

Wiz acquired Gem, and Veracode acquired Longbow. Adrian LOVES Longbow's website, BTW.

They discuss a number of essays, some of which are a must read:

• Daniel Miessler's Efficient Security Principle
• Subsalt's series on data privacy challenges
• Lucky vs Repeatable, a must-read from Morgan Housel
• AI has Flown the Coop, the latest from our absent co-host, Katie Teitler-Santullo
• Customer love by Ross Haleliuk and Rami McCarthy

We briefly cover some other fun - reverse typosquatting, AI models with built-in RCE, and Microsoft having YET ANOTHER breach.

We wrap up discussing Air Canada's short-lived AI-powered support chatbot.

Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes!

Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-357