On the eve of Election Day, the presidential campaign websites of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were both subjected of sustained cyberattacks waged with the Mirai cyberweapon, the same malware that was responsible for recent internet disruptions around the world.
New Mirai Cyberattack
Researchers at Flashpoint, a New York-based cybersecurity company, said on Monday, Nov. 7, that the candidates' websites sustained a total of at least four, 30-second distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. On the company's website is detailed that hackers waged the DDoS attacks against the candidates' websites on Sunday and Monday this week. However, the series of attempts aimed at knocking the websites offline were unsuccessful.
According to The Washington Times, Flashpoint's researchers pointed out that the recent attacks weren't likely the workings of nation-state hackers. The statement comes amid a row between Russia and the U.S. amplified by recent computer intrusions blamed on Moscow. The latest cyberattack, however, was attributed instead to "unsophisticated actors."
Flashpoint said that a website associated with the Republican nominee for president, Trump, was attacked once on Sunday, Nov. 6, and repeatedly over the course of several minutes on Monday, Nov. 7. Flashpoint added that during the last of the attacks against Trump's website on Monday was also launched a separate attach aimed against a website associated with his Democratic rival, Mrs. Clinton. All the attacks were perpetrated using Mirai-based botnets, but each of the attacks appear to be distinct and come from different groups.
According to internet security experts, Mirai is a specific strain of malware, or malicious software that recently came into attention after temporarily knocked out parts of the internet last month. The Mirai botnet is composed of a collection of infected IoT connected devices that operates like a megacannon. The malware is taking out websites and potentially knocking companies off the internet, by flooding computer servers with a huge amount of data,
On October 21, when it stopped users for hours from accessing top web services such as Twitter, Spotify and Netflix, this new cyberweapon made a big splash. Its makers are still unidentified. However, they released the malware's computer code, providing hackers everywhere blueprints to recreate the same kind of cyberattack.
Why The Cyberattack Was Unsuccessful?
Hackers are now fighting to control the Mirai botnet cyberweapon. The competition among them is leading to having many people trying to use Mirai at the same time. The effect of this situation is diffusing Mirai power, weakening the cyberweapon as a whole, according to Flashpoint.
Allison Nixon, Flashpoint's security research director said that hackers are competing over control of the same population of infected or vulnerable digital video recorders. Many hackers have been using the Mirai malware to interrupt computer servers that run popular multiplayer video games such as Minecraft and Counter-Strike, instead of pointing the cyberweapon at a single victim. According to CNN Money, that matches with Flashpoint's theory suggesting that Mirai was created by hackers who are frequenting gaming forums.
Ronnie Tokazowski, Flashpoint's senior malware analyst, said that the company is aware of lots of smaller attacks taking place. But neither of the DDoS attacks worked on Sunday and Monday, when the unidentified hackers repeatedly aimed to take down Clinton and Trump's campaign websites.
The failure of the latest Mirai attacks is due to this fight for control over the mass army of infected machines that forms the botnet. Normally, a botnet receives attack commands from a select few computers under the control of a hacker. But now the botnet is receiving instructions from 52 different locations.
