After his website KrebsOnSecurity.com [1] was targeted and taken down by a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack last week [2], Brian Krebs published a long piece [3] on the threat that cyber attacks pose to freedom of expression.
According to Kreb, DDoS attacks are “one of the fastest-growing censorship threats on the Internet today”, and “uniquely effective weapons for stomping on free speech”. The threat is further heightened by the fact that poorly secured IoT devices can be harnessed for such attacks.
Although some of the largest DDoS campaigns seem to be run by state actors [4] (it’s usually difficult to identify the source of a DDoS attack), Krebs points out that nation states are just one potential attacker as the same tools for cyber attack are available to individuals.
Cyber attacks’ potential for silencing news media is clear: earlier this year Sweden’s main news websites were taken down [5] by DDoS attacks, while Google has launched a programme [6] aiming to protect news sites from such attacks.
