Cybercrime Case Study: A Detailed Report on the DDOS Attack on Github

This report delves into a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack, a prevalent form of cybercrime, focusing on a specific incident targeting Github in 2018. The attack, which reached 1.35 terabits per second, disrupted Github's services and highlighted vulnerabilities in its network security. The report identifies the methods used by hackers, including flooding and malware servers, and discusses the involvement of various parties, such as Github's customers, stakeholders, employees, and security team. To mitigate the attack, Github collaborated with Akamai Prolexic, an information security community, to filter malicious traffic. The report also outlines preventive measures, including proper configuration, encryption technologies, data backup plans, and robust password systems, to enhance network security and prevent future DDOS attacks. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of securing computer networks and adopting encryption techniques to combat spam and fraudulent emails, ultimately protecting consumers and organizations from such cyber threats. The document is contributed by a student and available on Desklib for educational purposes.

DDOS attack

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DDOS attack
DDOS is defined as a distributed denial of services which is one of the most
common cyber-crimes. It is a part of DOS attack and the rate of this crime is increasing
very fast and in the year 2017 thousands of users were suffered from this cyber-attack.
There are various other types of security attacks occur, for example, ransomware,
wanna cry, malware and botnet attack (Bhushan, & Gupta, 2018). The main purpose of
this report is to understand the concept of the DDOS attack and how hackers attack
consumer private networks.
On February 28, the year 2018 Github organization has faced the problem of
DDOS attack which is a very biggest attack in the history of cyber-crimes. At that time,
this online community was suffered around 1.35 terabits per second of unwanted
signals due to which their services were not working properly. This attack impact on the
performance of the Github website and security team of this community identified a
large number of traffic signals in their personal servers (Bhuyan, Bhattacharyya, &
Kalita, 2015). There are many hackers they use complex algorithm, and botnet process
to detect personal information of any computer networks. In this attack, the hacker uses
flooding and malware servers and produce unauthorized signals to block the networks
of Github. In this modern generation many customers use various third-party
applications which are developed through malware and due to that users lose their
privacy and data. The management team of Github detected this cyber-crime and they
communicated with Akamai prolexic to reduce the problem of DDOS. Akamai prolexic is
an information security community which provides various security programmes to
consumers and organization. They produced a computer service to mitigate the incident
of DDOS in Github with the help of routing traffic signals and it also blocked or encrypts
malicious signals. It is observed that the data wires of Github are not able to handle a
large number of traffic signals but they designed their infrastructure to control five
times of traffic signals from last attacks. Around 10 minutes website was not worked
properly and it was suffered around $300 USD because hackers first block their serves
and after that, they demand money to restore their personal information (Hussain,
Hussain, Dillshad, Nafees, & Azeem, 2016).

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In this attack, hackers did not involve any botnet or malware because they
amplified their algorithms and spoofed the IP address of Github organization and
transfer spam emails of a message to their employees. Any hacker first collects all
information like IP address, type of servers, and computer devices and after that, they
attack the authorized servers of Github to block their services. In this attack various
kinds of parties are involved, for example, customers, stakeholders, employees of Github
and security team to resolve the problem of DDOS attack (Yan, Gong, & Yu, 2017). The
United States, and California both were involved in this attack because the headquarters
of Github hosting organization was located in these countries. At that time many
consumers and clients faced problem to access their accounts and they were not able to
take benefits of their services. This organization provides web-based services to their
customers and many e-commerce communities are connected with Github due to which
this attack affected their value in the market (Yan, Yu, Gong, & Li, 2016).
Figure: the DDOS attack on Github
(Source: Yan, Yu, Gong, & Li, 2016)
To reduce the issue of DDOS attack Github hired Akamai Prolexic community and it
identified traffic signals from networks. After this attack, this organization developed
various security plans and strategies and adopted an advanced security system like
biometric recognition and pattern recognition process (Wang, Zheng, Lou, & Hou,

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2015). Information and technology provided many security steps and methods to avoid
the issue of DDOS which are described below:
 Use proper configuration process
 Ensure that all computer networks of Github are working properly
 Adopt encryption and cryptography technologies to reduce security threats
 Use data backup plan and takes action immediately if any malware occur in
servers
 Create a DDoS action plan
 Increase the security of computer devices by using the password-based system
The DDOS attack is a very common security threat of communication networks and
hackers share unauthorized signals to use private networks. Github is an organization
that provides web-based services and in the year 2018, this community faced a DDOS
attack. At that time, around thousands of computer networks was blocked by hackers
and this attack is increasing due to lack of security. This report explained the
distributed denial of service attack on Github and prevention methods to avoid this
security threat. Therefore, consumers should ensure that their networks and servers
are secure and they can adopt encryption and robust technique to block spam or fraud
emails.

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References
Bhushan, K., & Gupta, B. B. (2018). Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack
mitigation in the software-defined network (SDN)-based cloud computing
environment.
Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing,
12(2),
1-13.
Bhuyan, M. H., Bhattacharyya, D. K., & Kalita, J. K. (2015). An empirical evaluation of
information metrics for low-rate and high-rate DDoS attack detection.
Pattern
Recognition Letters,
51, 1-7.
Hussain, K., Hussain, S. J., Dillshad, V., Nafees, M., & Azeem, M. A. (2016). An Adaptive
SYN Flooding attack Mitigation in DDOS Environment.
International Journal of
Computer Science and Network Security (IJCSNS),
16(7), 27.
Wang, B., Zheng, Y., Lou, W., & Hou, Y. T. (2015). DDoS attack protection in the era of
cloud computing and software-defined networking.
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308-319.
Yan, Q., Gong, Q., & Yu, F. R. (2017). Effective software-defined networking controller
scheduling method to mitigate DDoS attacks.
Electronics Letters,
53(7), 469-471.
Yan, Q., Yu, F. R., Gong, Q., & Li, J. (2016). Software-defined networking (SDN) and
distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in cloud computing environments: A
survey, some research issues, and challenges.
IEEE Communications Surveys &
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