2016 Dyn cyberattack

Dyn cyberattack

Map of areas most affected by attack, 16:45 UTC, 21 October 2016.
Time	12:10 – 14:20 UTC 16:50 – 18:11 UTC 21:00 – 23:11 UTC
Date	October 21, 2016 (2016-10-21)
Location	Europe and North America, especially the Eastern United States
Type	Distributed denial-of-service
Participants	Unknown
Suspect(s)	New World Hackers, Anonymous (self-claimed)

The 2016 Dyn cyberattack took place on October 21, 2016, and involved multiple distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks) targeting systems operated by Domain Name System (DNS) provider Dyn, which caused major Internet platforms and services to be unavailable to large swathes of users in Europe and North America. The groups Anonymous and New World Hackers claimed responsibility for the attack, but scant evidence was provided.

As a DNS provider, Dyn provides to end-users the service of mapping an Internet domain name—when, for instance, entered into a web browser—to its corresponding IP address. The distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack was accomplished through a large number of DNS lookup requests from tens of millions of IP addresses. The activities are believed to have been executed through a botnet consisting of a large number of Internet-connected devices—such as printers, IP cameras, residential gateways and baby monitors—that had been infected with the Mirai malware. Some people have estimated the throughput at 1.2 terabits per second, though Dyn has not confirmed that number; the attack is, according to experts, the largest DDoS attack on record.

According to Dyn, a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack began at 7:00 a.m. (EDT) and was resolved by 9:20 a.m. A second attack was reported at 11:52 a.m. and Internet users began reporting difficulties accessing websites. A third attack began in the afternoon, after 4:00 p.m. At 6:11 p.m., Dyn reported that they had resolved the issue.

Services affected by the attack included: