Did Prolexic Fend Off Anonymous’s Sony Attacks?

Prolexic, a company that defends clients against Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, says it has successfully combatted the “Largest Packet-Per-Second DDoS Attack Ever Documented in Asia”:

“Prolexic Technologies, the global leader in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation services, today announced it successfully mitigated another major DDoS attack of unprecedented size in terms of packet-per-second volume. Prolexic cautions that global organizations should consider the attack an early warning of the escalating magnitude of similar DDoS threats that are likely to become more prevalent in the next 6 to 8 months.”

Although it describes the customer only as “an Asian company in a high-risk e-commerce industry” it could well be connected to the recent attacks on Sony by Anonymous. A piece by Sebastian Moss – The Worst Is Yet To Come: Anonymous Talks To PlayStation LifeStyle — in April quoted an alleged member of Anonymous called Takai as reacting to unconfirmed reports that Sony had hired Prolexic to defend itself (Sony Enlists DDoS Defense Firm to Combat Hackers):

“It was expected. We knew sooner or later Sony would enlist outside help”. Pressed on whether Anonymous would take out Prolexic, Takai showed confidence in the ‘hacktavist’s’ upcoming retaliation, stating “well, if I had to put money on it … I’d say, Prolexic is going down like a two dollar wh*** in a Nevada chicken ranch  ”. He did admit that the company “is quite formidable” and congratulated “them for doing so well”, but again he warned “We do however have ways for dealing with the ‘Prolexic’ factor”.

The website also quoted Anonymous members expressing frustration at the new defences, but that they appeared to be confident they would eventually prevail. That doesn’t seem to have happened.

Prolexic’s press release says the attacks had been going on for months before the client approached the company. The size of the attack, the company said, was staggering:

According to Paul Sop, chief technology officer at Prolexic, the volume reached levels of approximately 25 million packets per second, a rate that can overwhelm the routers and DDoS mitigation appliances of an ISP or major carrier. In contrast, most high-end border routers can forward 70,000 packets per second in typical deployments. In addition, Prolexic’s security experts found 176,000 remotely controlled PCs, or bots, in the attacker’s botnet (robot network). This represents a significant threat as typically only 5,000-10,000 bots have been employed in the five previous attacks mitigated by Prolexic.

It does not say why it considers the attack over, now gives any timeline for the attack. But if it is Sony, it presumably means that Anonymous has withdrawn for now or is preoccupied with other things. Prolexic, however, is probably right when it warns this is a harbinger of things to come:

“Prolexic sees this massive attack in Asia with millions of packets per second as an early warning beacon of the increasing magnitude of DDoS attacks that may be on the horizon for Europe and North America in the next 6 to 8 months,” Sop said. “High risk clients, such as those extremely large companies in the gaming and gambling industries in Asia, are usually the first targets of these huge botnets just to see how successful they can be.”