Anti-Racism Sites Hit By Wave of Cyberattacks

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC:

Cyber-attacks against anti-racism organizations shot up in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a leading provider of protection services says. Cloudflare, which blocks attacks designed to knock websites offline, says advocacy groups in general saw attacks increase 1,120-fold. Mr Floyd’s death, in police custody, has sparked nationwide civil unrest in the US. Government and military websites also saw a notable increase in attacks. Cloudflare says that after Mr Floyd’s death and the ensuing violent clashes between police and protesters, it saw a noticeable jump in the amount of requests it blocked – an extra 19 billion (17%) from the corresponding weekend the previous month. That equates to an extra 110,000 blocked requests every second, it said.

The problem was particularly acute for certain types of organizations. One single website belonging to an unnamed advocacy group dealt with 20,000 requests a second. Anti-racism groups which belong to Cloudflare’s free program for at-risk organizations saw a large surge in the past week, from near-zero to more than 120 million blocked requests. Attacks on government and military websites were also up — by 1.8 and 3.8 times respectively.

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