Mysterious “LOVE” packet storms flood the internet since 2020 [Video]

Internet intelligence firm GreyNoise reports that it has been tracking large waves of “Noise Storms” containing spoofed internet traffic since January 2020. However, despite extensive analysis, it has not concluded its origin and purpose.

These Noise Storms are suspected to be covert communications, DDoS attack coordination signals, clandestine command and control (C2) channels of malware operations, or the result of a misconfiguration.

A curious aspect is the presence of a “LOVE” ASCII string in the generated ICMP packets, which adds further speculation as to their purpose and makes the case more intriguing.

GreyNoise published this information hoping the cybersecurity researchers community can help solve the mystery and uncover what’s causing these strange noise storms.

Characteristics of the noise storms

GreyNoise observes large waves of spoofed internet traffic coming from millions of spoofed IP addresses from various sources such as QQ, WeChat, and WePay.

The “storms” create massive traffic directed to specific internet service providers like …