New York Magazine has suffered a likely DDoS attack which knocked the publication offline for several hours. The attacker, who goes by ThreatKing, claims he went after the site because he “hates New York”; however, the timing of the attack with the release of a cover story featuring 35 victims of Bill Cosby certainly raises questions about the motive.
Following this news, Ofer Gayer, Security Researcher, Imperva Incapsula, sheds some light on the situation:
“We believe these attacks were perpetrated by the same cyber vandalism group, Vikingdom, that attacked several US government sites in March of this year (https://www.incapsula.com/blog/vikingdom-ddos-attacks-us-government.html) Unlike some of the better known hacktivist groups that use DDoS to embarrass organizations and draw attention to a cause, Vikingdom simply appears to want attention for itself. From what we observed during the March attack, the group does not appear to have access to a sophisticated DDoS botnet, nor a very large one, and rather seems to be renting a a low-cost variety. This is consistent with the growing availability of inexpensive DDoS botnets-for-rent we cited in our Global DDoS Trends Report (https://www.incapsula.com/blog/ddos-global-threat-landscape-report-q2-2015.html).”