Attack description :
Anonymous Sudan issue a warning to PayPal (https://paypal.com) about a cyber attack on its infrastructure. Anonymous Sudan also shared one POC of successful 30 second DDOS attack. DoS and DDoS activities are specifically designed to interfere with the normal functioning of networks, services, or servers by inundating them with an excessive amount of internet traffic. Although these incidents can cause temporary disruptions and potentially result in financial losses, they can be effectively managed by implementing appropriate response measures.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (https://paypal.com) is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.
Mitigations :
- Network Monitoring: Employing robust network monitoring tools allows organizations to identify abnormal traffic patterns and potential attacks in real time. This enables swift action and mitigation.
- Traffic Filtering: Employing firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) can help filter out malicious traffic and reduce the impact of attacks.
- Bandwidth Scaling: Collaborating with internet service providers (ISPs) to ensure sufficient bandwidth capacity helps absorb the impact of attacks and maintain service availability.
- Load Balancing: Distributing network traffic across multiple servers can help alleviate the strain caused by attacks and improve overall system resilience.
- Incident Response Planning: Developing an incident response plan that includes procedures to detect, respond, and recover from DoS or DDoS attacks is essential. This plan should involve key stakeholders and outline communication channels, mitigation strategies, and recovery processes.
- Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): Utilizing CDNs can help distribute traffic geographically and reduce the impact of attacks by caching content closer to end-users.
- Cloud-based DDoS Protection Services: Engaging the services of cloud-based DDoS protection providers can help mitigate large-scale attacks by absorbing and filtering malicious traffic before it reaches the organization’s network.
Impacts :
As per claimed by Anonymous Sudan, PayPal was down for 30 second leading to a period of downtime. Anonymous Sudan also said that this was a POC for future cyber attack on Paypal(https://paypal.com) .
Take away: As Anonymous Sudan claimed they would target any organization from USA cyber Space. DDOS attack on PayPal (https://paypal.com) is a part of Cyber war against USA initiated by Anonymous Sudan.
Disclaimer : The information provided herein is on “as is” basis, without warranty of any kind.