The Department of Homeland Security is investigating the widespread service disruption affecting major online players such as Twitter and Netflix.
“We’re aware and are investigating all potential cause,” department spokesman Gillian Christensen said in a statement. The disruption stemmed from an attack on Internet infrastructure provider Dyn, and led to massive service shutdowns Friday. An assailant has not been identified.
Dyn said it was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack, which overwhelms servers with Web traffic. Spotify, Reddit, Airbnb and Pfizer were among companies affected.
“We have begun monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure,” the New Hampshire-based Dyn said on its website. “Our engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue.”
A faction of the hacking collective Anonymous appeared to take credit on Twitter, calling it a “cyber protest” of Hillary Clinton. The claim could not be immediately verified.
California Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on CNN that it was too early to attribute responsibility. “It’s of grave concern, but at this point it’s too early to say what was the cause of this, who was responsible, what the motivations may be.”
DHS issued a warning this month that more hackers were using DDoS attacks. The technique involves using malware to take over common consumer devices and mobilizing them into an army of “bots” capable of perpetrating an attack.
Nation-states have employed DDoS attacks in the past, most notably Iran. The country used the method to attack American financial institutions on multiple occasions between 2012-14, as well as Saudi energy companies and Israeli infrastructure.
Criminal elements have also engaged in the attacks. The Department of Justice this month charged two Maryland teenagers with “conspiring to cause damage to protected computers” for their alleged role in a DDoS attack that crippled the Playstation Network and Xbox Live over Christmas 2014.
Rudy Takala contributed to this report.
