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The last two weeks have seen a spate
of denial-of-service (DOS) attacks against news sites, coordinated attempts to
overwhelm outlets with fake incoming data so the sites cannot respond to legitimate
users.
On Wednesday, we covered a DOS attack on the U.S. site change.org,
apparently in reaction to its petition calling for the release of the detained artist
and social critic Ai Weiwei. On Tuesday, we described the widespread attacks on Malaysian media in
the run-up to last weekend's election in Sarawak.
LiveJournal, the company at the
heart of the Russian-speaking blogosphere, has also been struggling with
denial-of-service problems. The attacks, which began in late March, were seemingly aimed at anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny. However, by slowing down or
stopping the working of the entire LiveJournal service, they ended up affecting
a sizeable proportion of bloggers across the Runet.
The assault on LiveJournal abated on
April 6, only to be followed by a new DOS attack on Novaya
Gazeta, a leading Russian independent newspaper. Reports from
security experts Kaspersky Labs suggest that both Russian takedowns used the
Optima/Darkness botnet, a set of personal computers belonging to innocent users
that have been hijacked by malware placed are under control of organized
criminals.
Novaya Gazeta has demanded that the local authorities
investigate the attack. Currently, however, prosecutions against botnet
operators and their clients are few and far between. This, despite the growing
use of DOS attacks for commercial and political reasons--and the dropping cost of
such services. In particular, the Darkness botnet used in the Russian attacks was
advertising in December as accepting any "targets
regardless of their theme" for "on average... $50 per 24-hour period."
Attacks on LiveJournal and Novaya Gazeta might cost considerably
more than that, since both websites had strong defenses in place as a result of
previous assaults. But it seems that, as ever, the opponents of the press are
more than willing to pay criminals to silence independent media online. And in
too many nations, the price of doing so, and the probability of any
repercussions, continues to be low.
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