2 November 2023
– Attacks enabled by a stack of rotten actors
2 November 2023
No less than 40 Hungarian websites, nearly all of them regime critical media outlets, have suffered waves of DDoS attacks from April to September 2023. When the International Press Institute (IPI) reported on the attacks in late August, they became the next victim of the attacker.
Qurium has investigated the attack data from IPI and two Hungarian media and can reveal a part of the attack infrastructure being used. Qurium’s research illustrates how layers of infrastructure and service providers together form a “bullet-proof” setup for malicious activities, where attackers are able to operate freely while being covered by their service providers. The setup includes providers of volatile IP space with fake Geolocation data, bullet-proof hosting providers, and proxy providers without owners.
This report is Qurium’s fourth investigation in the series Weaponizing proxy and VPN providers that focuses on how infrastructure of proxy and VPN providers, millions of IP addresses globally distributed, are used in DDoS attacks against regime critical media, while the owners of the infrastructure are looking the other way.
Report: DDoS attacks against Hungarian media traced to proxy infrastructure “White Proxies”
Series of reports: Weaponizing proxy and VPN providers
Contacts
Digital forensics: Tord Lundström <t@virtualroad.org> Technical Director
Media: Clara Zid <info@virtualroad.org> Media and Outreach Manager