How a DNS hack in Australia took down marquee sites in the US
Twitter, The New York Times and other prominent Websites were struck by a powerful cyberattack that continued affecting other Websites into Tuesday evening, directing visitors to a site purportedly controlled by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA).
The attackers apparently struck an Australian IT services company, Melbourne IT, which provides domain name registration services. The pro-Syrian government SEA has recently conducted several high-profile attacks against media and other Websites.
It appears that the hackers modified master DNS (Domain Name System) entries, allowing them to replace the correct IP addresses for Twitter.com and NYTimes.com with their own, said David Ulevitch, CEO and founder of the security company OpenDNS.
OpenDNS monitors when domains are redirected, and it appeared the attack was continuing into the evening U.S. time, Ulevitch said.
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