So there’s an amazing story that sort of got lost (at least I didn’t see people talking about it much in my Twitter feed).

Brian Krebs, a very talented Internet Security analyst, got hit with one of the most intense denial of service attack ever recorded. Krebs often gets targeted by spammers and hackers who want to punish him for looking into their affairs.

It turns out that this bot attack utilized hijacked IoT devices!

Akamai, who was hosting his blog pro bono, eventually had to kick him off their network because it was costing them so much money to fend off the DDoS. Lesson: it’s still quite possible for websites to be taken offline for prolonged periods by hostile attacks so long as the aggressors are persistent and the target isn’t wealthy.

Who came to Krebs rescue? Motherfucking Google!!!!! And their Project Shield which was built to help protect journalists and activists targeted in this fashion. Freedom of speech enforced using tech, not just policy. Go Larry & Sergey! I love when Google puffs out their chest to bad actors and says “come at us.”

Part of me wonders what role the US Government should be playing in helping US citizens maintain their business capabilities in the face of foreign attacks (Krebs’ website is part of his business and the DDoS was certainly emanating from outside the US).

Anyway, after also recently watching Zero Days documentary about Stuxnet, the next President is going to have to do a lot of thinking around our security tech infrastructure and nation state actors.