Threat of new malware looms over cyberspace

Threat of new malware looms over cyberspace

Context:

Cyber security agencies have detected a new malware called Saposhi

What has happened?

• Saposhi was detected around 15 days ago, and is currently being watched and studied.
• Saposhi is similar in its intensity to another malware called Reaper which had taken over millions of devices at the rate of 10,000 devices per day

How does Saposhi work?

• It takes over electronic devices and turns them into “bots”
• It creates a network of bots called a botnet
• It then uses the botnet to ping a single server at the same time.
• As the numbers of pings are far beyond the server’s capacity, the server crashes and denies service to its consumers.
• After this, it can be used for any purpose, including a Distributed Denial of Service attack which, with enough firepower, can cripple entire industries.

Instances of DDoS Attacks:

• In July 2016, small and medium internet service providers in Maharashtra fell prey to a DDoS attack, which caused disruption in the services of several Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the State.
• Another malware, Mirai, using a botnet of 5 lakh devices, had caused the servers of Dyn, a leading domain name service provider, to crash, affecting services of popular websites like Twitter, Netflix and Reddit