Library of Congress Fends Off Massive DDoS Attack

The US Library of Congress has fought off a significant DDoS attack, officials have revealed.

In a blog post, Bernard A. Barton Jr., the chief information officer of the Library of Congress penned a blog post where he revealed that the Library of Congress was at the receiving end of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack.

The cyberattack resulted in the temporary disruption of Library websites and services, including websites such as Congress.gov, the U.S. Copyright Office, the BARD (Braille and Audio Reading Download) service from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, several other databases as well as the network handling incoming and outgoing email.

However, a quick turnaround from the IT department and cybersecurity partners on contract helped the Library fend off the attack.

“I’m pleased to report that our team of Library IT professionals and contract partners have returned our networked services to normal functionality,” Barton stated. “We did this while maintaining the security of the Library’s network.”

While he did not reveal any information on the attackers, he revealed that the Library had “turned over key evidence” to the authorities. The cyberattack was comprehensive in its scale, “a massive and sophisticated DNS assault” that took to multiple forms of attack, according to Barton.

He noted that the Library is satisfied in the way it has fended off the attack, with systems now fortified. In a further reveal, Barton pointed to other federal agencies within the government had offered their assistance throughout the cyberattack.

He further added:

This is not the first time that a large agency or organization has been targeted with this kind of denial of service, and it certainly won’t be the last.

The most recent DDoS trends revealed that the average size of a DDoS attack in the first half of 2016 was 986 Mbps, or just under a 1Gpbs attack, enough to knock most organizations offline. The biggest DDoS attack of 2016 so far? An eye-popping 579Gbps DDoS attack.

Image credit: Wikimedia.