Who broke the internet?
We don’t really think about the technicality or how the internet works every time we go online to check our social media or to visit out favorite gossip sites. We don’t even think about our music streaming devices. But this morning, we got a reality check because Spotify wasn’t streaming and Twitter was down!
Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Business Insider were amongst the websites that wouldn’t load on my desktop. Why were these websites down? Dyn, a DNS provider, was bombarded with denial of service (DDoS) attacks. This is why when we tried to reach these websites the broken link message would show up.
So what do DNS providers do? They operate as a middle-man between the URLS and IP addresses. Basically, they are the reason you can reach your favorite websites instead of just being shown binary codes we wouldn’t be able to understand unless we have a degree in information technology or computer science. DDoS attacks are used to censor specific websites by making them unavailable.
Homeland Security is already looking into who started these cyber-attacks and one thing is certain there needs to be better security. In a time where we depend on the internet this not only reduces productivity but also reduces profits. Our businesses depend on the internet.