How your smart device caused the internet to crash and burn

The most terrifying thing about the most recent cyber attack is that the devices that surround you could be responsible. Your Amazon Echo was so cool until it destroyed Twitter. 

On Friday, a massive distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) hit Dyn, a company that hosts domain name servers that help users connect to websites. Domain name servers (DNS) are the GPS of the internet, when you type an address into your browser it figures out where the website's data is located. 

On Friday, they were smashed hard. The DDoS attack prevented people from accessing numerous large websites and services, including Twitter, Spotify and Paypal, which rely on Dyn's services. Due to the huge amount of DNS affected, much of the internet struggled to work. Read more...