Cyber attacks cripple Twitter, Netflix, other websites

San Francisco  : Cyber attacks pounded the underpinnings of the internet Friday, crippling Twitter, Netflix and other major websites with the help of once-dumb devices made smart with online connections.

Waves of attacks incapacitated a crucial piece of internet infrastructure, hampering or outright blocking access to popular online venues.

"When I see something like this, I have to think state actor," said Carbon Black national security strategist Eric O'Neill, a former "spy hunter" on the FBI counter-intelligence force.

"This is not some hacker sitting in his basement typing away on a keyboard."

The attack was said to put a troubling new spin on an old hacker attack known as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), where millions of devices in the fast-growing internet of things took part in the cyber onslaught.

Armies of computers infected with malicious code are typically used in DDoS attacks intended to overwhelm targets with simultaneous online requests.

Hacker software referred to as Mirai that takes control of IoT devices was evidently linked to the attack, with the broad range of devices making requests helping get past Dyn defenses.

"We are seeing attacks coming from a number of different locations," Level 3 Communications internet services company chief security officer Dale Drew said in a video posted online.

"We are seeing attacks coming from an internet-of-things botnet that we identified called Mirai also involved in this attack."