Brazilian IPs attacked Russia via DDoS

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Russia’s NKTsKI (National Center for Computer Incident Coordination) has released a list of IPs that have carried out distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) in Russia to destabilize general services, from local websites to infrastructure. There are more than 17,000 IPs worldwide and about 1,600 located in Brazil.

IP is an acronym for Internet protocol address; it would be like the “home” address of a house – but, in this case, of a connection.

DDoS attacks abuse the limits of server capacities to paralyze them. For example, a high access load on a specific website to take it offline or make it inoperable.

NKTsKI is part of the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) created in 2018.

Among the 17,576 IP addresses disclosed by the Russian government, most are concentrated in areas in the United States and the European Union. Still, it is possible to note the IPs of agencies such as FBI (US Federal Bureau of Investigation) and the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).

Despite this presence in the list, it is impossible to say that US agencies have officially launched attacks because it is possible to falsify the referrer header information, thus deceiving those who receive the IP information. The Russian government has also released a list with the referrer domain information of the attackers.

BRAZIL AND ANONYMOUS

Brazil appears in 1,632 registered IPs in several Brazilian states.

It is interesting to note that many addresses are residential, meaning that some attackers even used tools like VPN (virtual private network) to mask the attack connection.

Recently, Anonymous activist cells have organized to carry out cyberattacks in Russia. A large part of the IPs disclosed by NKTsKI may be connected to members of cells linked to the movement.

Besides defacing (defacing sites) and leaking, DDoS attacks are also part of the modus operandi of Anonymous cells worldwide.

NKTsKI further stated that “Ukraine, which has managed to assemble a volunteer ‘IT army’ of civilian hackers from around the world, has come up with a new set of targets that include the Belarusian railway network, Russia’s GLONASS global navigation satellite system, and telecom operators such as MTS and Beeline.