In response to the reports that Top Gear fans may have caused the inaccessibility of the BBC website as a result of Jeremy Clarkson’s suspension, Dave Larson, CTO at Corero writes:
“Did they or didn’t they? Recent media reports indicate that the BBC website had been experiencing outages over the last few days, potentially related to DDoS attacks inspired by the suspension of Top Gear presenter, Jeremy Clarkson. It is always difficult, or nearly impossible to determine the source of DDoS attacks—unless of course the hacktivist groups openly admit to their wrongdoings. The critical point to take away from this DDoS attack scenario is that any Internet connected organization is at risk for attack- period, and motivations for threatening and following through on DDoS attacks are wide ranging and sometimes completely obscure. More often than not, attacks come in the form of cyber terrorism, similar to what the BBC appears to have experienced. The victim is threatened with an attack unless they comply with the terms presented to them, and the attack is carried out unless the victim conforms. What’s worse is that DDoS attack tools are easy to come by, and it doesn’t take a cyber coding expert to launch a crippling attack. Organizations failing to prepare against this destructive form of cyber terrorism are leaving their business, customers, consumers and Intellectual property at risk. Preparing appropriately with a layered security strategy to eliminate DDoS attacks at the very edge of their network will allow for normal business operations to take place in the event of an attack.”