How Google Took on Mirai, KrebsOnSecurity
The third week of September 2016 was a dark and stormy one for KrebsOnSecurity. Wave after wave of huge denial-of-service attacks flooded this site, forcing me to pull the plug on it until I could secure protection from further assault. The site resurfaced three days later under the aegis of Google’s Project Shield, an initiative which seeks to protect journalists and news sites from being censored by these crippling digital sieges. Damian Menscher, a Google security engineer with whom I worked very closely on the migration to Project Shield, spoke publicly for the first time this week about the unique challenges involved in protecting a small site like this one from very large, sustained and constantly morphing attacks.