Who Caused the Twitter Attack?

On 8/6/09 the an alarm rang that Twitter had been hit by a large attack and was not working for several hours,followed by a period of slowness and sporadic time-outs. It was so large that Twitter didn't even know it was under attack until it crashed. This was called a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack (DDoS). It came from infected computers from all over the world. They were zombie computers and were used by hackers and cybercriminals to cause trouble.

Graham Cluley, a technology consultant at Sophos, explained in an article by C. McCarthy in CNET News, that DDoS attacks come from millions of compromised computers. Some of these computers belonged to people with Twitter accounts. Because they either did not install or update their security software, visited risque sites, or downloaded music and movies from unsecure sites, their computers had become zombie computers.

During the DDoS attack, zombie computers were used to inundate Twitter servers with communication requests. It was difficult for Twitter to deal with the attack because it was hard to distinguish legitimate Twitter communications from communications that were part of the attack. They did not want to block access from IP addresses as many of the zombie computers that was sending traffic to Twitter belonged to law abiding people.

The question is "Who Caused the Twitter Attack?" There are several possibilities:

1. Paul Henry, a security analyst, explained that it happened at the same time as the Hacker Convention where a new version of malware, that was found on Twitter messages, was introduced.
2. A European Blogger believes that a foreign country was behind the attack because such a large attack could only be organized by somewith huge resources.
3. According to a spokeswoman at Facebook, the attack might have been directed at an individual who had a presence on a number of sites, rather than the sites themselves.
4. So many Twitters did not have adequate security on their computers and were zombie computers that they made it easy for a hacker to attack Twitter

We can all learn from the Twitter attack how important it is to install security software on our computers and continuously undate and upgrade them. This will keep them safe and secure and not put Twitter or any other site at risk of being attacked.

I can identify with those who had no security on their computers. I once was like you, but then my computer started to slow down. I met someone who told me he could help. I took a test and found out that 7,500 malicious codes were on my computer. I immediately enrolled for personal computer services. A team of techs cleaned up my computer and installed professional grade software on it. I now occasionally call them if I have any computer related issues.

Check List for a Safe and Secure Computer With the Following:

• Alerts of unexpected events that could harm your computer.
• Daily scans that detect and remove malware before it harms your computer.
• The latest security updates.
• A protected computer with a combination of antivirus+antispyware.
• Have the holes in back of your computer closed up so hackers can't get in.
• Critical data and sensitive information protected from being compromised or modified.
• Your organization's computing assets protected from loss and/or damage from network attacks.
  
• A firewall that is monitored.
• Fully protected emails and attachments.
• Improved performance of your computer.

Was your computer one of the zombie computers that contributed to the attack? Even if it wasn't, are you sure it won't be in the future? Click on the Twitter icon to learn how to protect your computer from cybercriminals.