Brian Krebs’ website appears to be holding steady, following what has been described as “one of the biggest web attacks ever seen”.
The information security expert’s site, Krebs on Security, had been targeted by a sizable distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.
At its height, approximately 620 gigabits of data per second were directed to his website, and while it managed to withstand the onslaught, a decision to take it temporarily offline was made.
It is now being protected by Google’s Project Shield, which is a free service provided by the tech giant.
As it explains on its official website, it is designed to “protect news sites and free expression from DDoS attacks on the web”.
“There is every indication that this attack was launched with the help of a botnet that has enslaved a large number of hacked so-called Internet of Things devices."
Of this particularly “record-smashing” attack, Krebs said: “There is every indication that this attack was launched with the help of a botnet that has enslaved a large number of hacked so-called Internet of Things (IoT) devices – mainly routers, IP cameras and digital video recorders (DVRs) that are exposed to the internet and protected with weak or hard-coded passwords.”
The security expert believes that the DDoS attack may have been in response to a story he published on his website earlier this month.
Krebs, who is an investigative journalist, had reported on a case involving two men that were operating a highly successful and damaging vDOS service.
“The traffic hurled at my site in that massive attack included the text string “freeapplej4ck,” a reference to the hacker nickname used by one of vDOS’s alleged co-founders,” he said.
