IT professional explains Friday’s cyber-attack

A major cyber-attack crippled Twitter, Paypal, Netflix and dozens of other sites on Friday. Cyber-attack expert, Brandon Peccoralo, says the attack proved to be annoying, but not dangerous. "Imagine

News 12 Staff

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Oct 24, 2016, 2:00 AM

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Updated 2,887 days ago

A major cyber-attack crippled Twitter, Paypal, Netflix and dozens of other sites on Friday.

Cyber-attack expert, Brandon Peccoralo, says the attack proved to be annoying, but not dangerous.

"Imagine if you said, 'everybody get in your cars and jump on the NJ Turnpike all at once,'" Peccoralo says. "What would happen is everybody would be sitting in traffic stuck."

The IT professional who has managed data centers and cloud computing says hackers did it all to make a statement. Peccoralo says hackers wanted to make businesses and people notice what they could do.

New Jersey was part of the large section of the East Coast hit by the cyber-attack, but Peccoralo says New Jersey wasn't a target even though it is a backbone of the internet.

Peccoralo says the average person shouldn't be too worried by Friday's attack, but that the real concern is when an attack is a diversion.

The attacks appeared to overwhelm websites, but did not seem to do more than that, as there has not been any major reports of personal data lost or compromised.