D0z.me — the Evil URL Shortener

supernothing writes "DDoS attacks seem to be in vogue today, especially considering the skirmishes over WikiLeaks in the past few weeks. The size of a DDoS attacks, however, has historically been limited by how many computers one has managed to recruit into a botnet. These botnets almost universally require code to be executed on the participants' local systems, whether they are willing or unwilling. A new approach has been emerging recently, however, which uses some simple JavaScript to achieve similar ends. d0z.me is a new service that utilizes these techniques, but provides a unique twist on the idea. Posing as a legitimate URL shortening service, it serves users the requested pages in an iFrame, while simultaneously participating in a DDoS attack in the background. No interaction is required beyond clicking the link and staying on the page. This makes it relatively trivial to quickly mount large-scale DDoS attacks, and affords willing participants plausible deniability in the assault."

Comments

Re:Since its a redirect...

[TheRaven64]

The JS can create and destroy iframes pointed at the site. The browser will then load the site into the iframe, but the security model prevents the referrer field from being present in the iframe to avoid leaking sensitive information (for example, if you load adverts into an iframe while you have a URL with a session ID in it). If this isn't the default, then a silent redirect of the outer frame to an HTTPS URL will do it (aside from a recently-fixed bug in Safari, referrer is not provided to an HTTP URL when it is an HTTPS URL).