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On October 21, 2016, two large distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) waves struck Dyn’s Managed DNS service, disrupting access to websites and online services that depended on it. Dyn later confirmed that a significant volume of the traffic came from Mirai-based botnets. The FBI was investigating at the time, but its October 26 notice said it had not confirmed who was responsible.
What happened in the Dyn DNS attack?
Dyn provided managed DNS: it helped translate domain names into the network addresses browsers and apps need to reach online services. When Dyn’s infrastructure was overwhelmed, users could have trouble reaching services that used Dyn for DNS, even if those services’ own servers were still running.
Dyn reported two principal waves on October 21, 2016. Its postmortem describes the first as running from approximately 11:10 to 13:20 UTC, with a second beginning around 15:50 UTC. Recovery was substantial by about 17:00 UTC, though additional sources continued to cause residual impact until approximately 20:30 UTC. Dyn responded with traffic shaping, changes to anycast traffic policies, internal filtering and scrubbing services. Dyn’s postmortem gives its account of the incident.
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DNS congestion had a compounding effect: recursive resolvers retried legitimate requests, producing traffic Dyn estimated at 10–20 times normal volume across many IP addresses. That retry traffic made the apparent number of source endpoints difficult to interpret. Dyn estimated up to 100,000 malicious endpoints at the time of its report, but said it could not verify reports that the attack reached approximately 1.2 Tbps. The endpoint estimate and the unverified bandwidth figure describe different things and should not be treated as equivalent confirmed measurements.
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Services users had trouble reaching
Disrupted name resolution affected customers rather than only Dyn’s own website. A 2018 USENIX study of Mirai names Amazon, GitHub, Netflix, PayPal, Reddit and Twitter among Dyn customers affected by the name-resolution disruption. This does not mean every user or every service was unavailable throughout the entire incident.
What was Mirai, and how was it linked to the attack?
Mirai was malware that compromised internet-connected devices—including cameras, routers and digital video recorders—and used them as remotely controlled bots. Those devices could be directed to send traffic at a target, creating a DDoS attack. The FBI’s October 26, 2016 private industry notice described the Dyn waves as coming from IoT-device botnets believed to be infected with a Mirai variation. The FBI notice did not identify the people behind the Dyn attack.
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Independent measurement supports Mirai’s role without resolving who controlled every device. In its peer-reviewed study, researchers recorded 23 attack commands targeting Dyn infrastructure between 11:07 and 16:55 UTC. They also found a 71% overlap between 107,000 IP addresses associated with the Dyn attack and Mirai scanning activity observed by their network telescope. The authors concluded that Mirai was clearly involved while allowing that other hosts may also have participated. These measurements link the attack to Mirai activity; they do not identify the operator of each bot or prove who ordered every wave.
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Not in its October 2016 notice. The FBI said it had no confirmation of a responsible person or group, despite claims of responsibility appearing online. The wording in the original headline reflects that historical investigation, not evidence that the inquiry remains active today. The FBI Cyber Division notice, dated October 26, 2016, describes what investigators knew at that time.
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In 2017, the Department of Justice announced guilty pleas by three people for operating Mirai. DOJ said the malware reached hundreds of thousands of compromised devices at its peak and targeted wireless cameras, routers and DVRs. It also said the original operators’ involvement ended after Mirai’s source code was posted on a criminal forum. The pleas establish responsibility for operating Mirai and related attacks; they do not establish that those defendants personally directed every attack wave against Dyn. The DOJ announcement explains the legal outcome.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to reduce the risk from IoT botnets
The FBI and IC3 guidance focuses on reducing the chance that internet-connected devices can be compromised or misused. These measures are general precautions; no single household product can be said to have prevented the Dyn incident.
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- Replace default credentials. Set unique, strong passwords for device accounts and router administration instead of leaving factory defaults in place.
- Install firmware updates. Apply updates from the manufacturer, and consider update support and the manufacturer’s security track record before buying a device.
- Restrict remote access. Turn off remote management and exposed services or ports when they are not needed.
- Separate IoT devices. Where the router supports it, place smart devices on a separate or protected network rather than giving every device unrestricted access to household computers.
- Choose a router with ongoing security support. The FBI and IC3 recommend a secure router with robust security and authentication controls; a router alone does not remove the need to update and secure connected devices.
- Plan for service disruption. Organizations that depend on DNS or other third-party infrastructure should include DDoS scenarios in incident planning.
The IC3 advisory offers consumer guidance on router and IoT security, while the FBI notice discusses the risks of insecure defaults, exposed remote access and devices that are difficult to patch.
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