Dozens of major internet websites are currently undergoing a massive DDoS attack that has almost crippled the internet, western media is reporting.
It is said that a major DNS service called Dyn is being attacked that has blocked the access to websites like Twitter, SoundCloud, New York Times, Github, spotify, heroku and shopify, Boston Globe, Airbnb, Reddit, Freshbooks, Vox Media properties and others.
Dyn — along with other DNS servers — act as IP resolver for URLs we type.So for instance if you type example.com, its the DNS server that resolves this domain name and returns an IP address that’s shown to users.
If DNS layer is attacked, it becomes impossible for URLs to be resolved and hence websites become inaccessible.
Dyn said that it was attacked few hours ago, however, services were recovered quickly. Then a new, more serious, attack was launched almost half an hour ago (Around 10:15 PM Pakistan Time) that completely knocked down the access to the service, and ultimately many dozen websites have become inaccessible.
Early reports are saying that this is one of the largest DDoS attacks in the history, which is still ongoing.
