Washington, Oct 21 (EFE).- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was investigating cyber attacks that affected a host of U.S.-based Web sites on Friday.
DHS, the government agency responsible for cyber security, said it was looking into “all possible causes.”
“At this point I don’t have any information about who may be responsible for this malicious activity,” White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, while adding that DHS was “monitoring the situation.”
A provider of Internet services for major U.S. enterprises including Twitter, Spotify and The New York Times said around mid-day Friday that it was contending with a second cyber attack just hours after an initial strike crippled numerous Web sites on the East Coast.
“We have begun monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed (Domain Name System) infrastructure. Our Engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue,” Dyn said on its Web site.
“Our engineers continue to investigate and mitigate several attacks aimed against the Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure,” the company said two hours later.
DDoS, or Distributed Denial of Service, is a common tactic that involves trying to a Web site or service with a large volume of traffic from diverse sources.
The first DDoS attack came shortly after 7 am and services were restored by 9:20 am, according to Dyn.
Online retailer Amazon reported problems with its own Web site and with the sites of companies that depend on its Amazon Web Services unit.