Hackers Knock Security News Blog Offline with Massive DDoS Attack

Security news blog KrebsOnSecurity.com experienced what it called “an extremely large and unusual” distributed denial-of-service attack that eventually took the site down when Akamai removed it from its network.

KrebsOnSecurity reported its site was attacked Tuesday with attack traffic that measured 620 to 665 gigabits, almost twice the largest attack Akamai researchers encountered before. Unique aspects of the attack include a large amount of traffic coming from a communication protocol called generic routing encapsulation and a botnet made of various internet-of-things devices.

Thursday afternoon, Brian Krebs tweeted that Akamai, which had been providing free services, removed the site from its networks:

Krebs said the attack could be related to his coverage of a DDoS-for-hire service vDOS because of a string that referenced one of the vDOS owner’s nicknames.

As of Friday, the site is still offline.