Anonymous plans to use DNS amplification attack in #opGlobalBlackout
While Anonymous managed to take down Interpol's website on at the end of February and have defaced a number of vulnerable sites including, most recently, Panda Security, threats to take down bigger targets have often failed to materialize. What some believed to be the group's boldest plan yet—an effort to bring down the Internet's entire Domain Name System (DNS) in what they're calling #opGlobalBlackout
Disappointed with the current denial of service tools at their disposal, Anonymous members are apparently working to develop a next-generation attack tool that will, among other options, provide for DNS amplification attacks - The group plans to launch such an attack against the Internet's root DNS servers on the 31st of March (or at least according to this Pastebin) - The root DNS servers comprise 13 machines responsible for translating all the worlds domain names to IP addresses. The group states that while most ISPs do make use of DNS caches, they are there more for the sake of performance improvement rather than a failover / backup mechanism. Knocking out the root servers the group claims, would effectively mean that unless you know the specific IP address of the corresponding website you're trying to reach, the Internet (or at least the HTTP / WWW component of it) would appear to be 'down' / offline.
The simplicity of the attack is what could potentially make this quite devastating - should they manage to pull it off that is. The group states that the outage "may only lasts one hour, maybe more, maybe even a few days. No matter what, it will be global. It will be known."
