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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Attack On Internet Called Largest Ever |
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| sofia |
| 10/23/02 at 10:45:01 |
| Attack On Internet Called Largest Ever http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A828-2002Oct22.html By David McGuire and Brian Krebs washingtonpost.com Staff Writers Tuesday, October 22, 2002; 5:40 PM The heart of the Internet sustained its largest and most sophisticated attack ever, starting late Monday, according to officials at key online backbone organizations. Around 5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, a "distributed denial of service" (DDOS) attack struck the 13 "root servers" that provide the primary roadmap for almost all Internet communications. Despite the scale of the attack, which lasted about an hour, Internet users worldwide were largely unaffected, experts said. FBI officials would not speculate on who might have planned or carried out the attack. David Wray, a spokesman for the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), said the bureau is "aware of the reports and looking into it." DDOS attacks overwhelm networks with an onslaught of data until they cannot be used. According to security experts, the incident probably was the result of multiple attacks, in which attackers concentrate the power of many computers against a single network to prevent it from operating. "This was the largest and most complex DDOS attack ever against the root server system," said a source at one of the organizations responsible for operating the root servers. Ordinary Internet users experienced no slowdowns or outages because of safeguards built into the Internet's architecture. A longer, more extensive attack could have seriously damaged worldwide electronic communications, the source said. Internet Software Consortium Inc. Chairman Paul Vixie said that if more servers went down, and if the hackers sustained their hour-long strike a bit longer, Internet users around the world would have begun to see delays and failed connections. Chris Morrow, network security engineer for UUNET, said "This is probably the most concerted attack against the Internet infrastructure that we've seen." UUNET is the service provider for two of the world's 13 root servers. A unit of WorldCom Inc., it also handles approximately half of the world's Internet traffic. DDOS attacks are some of the most common and easiest to perpetrate, but the size and scope of Monday's strike set it apart. Vixie said only four or five of the 13 servers were able to withstand the attack and remain available to legitimate Internet traffic throughout the strike. "It was an attack against all 13 servers, which is a little more rare than an attack against any one of us," he said. The server Vixie operates was available throughout the attack, he said. Internet addressing giant VeriSign Inc., which operates the most important server from an undisclosed Northern Virginia location, reported no outages. … The DNS is built so that eight or more of the world's 13 root servers must fail before ordinary Internet users start to see slowdowns. … "The only way to stop such attacks is to fix the vulnerabilities on the machines that ultimately get taken over and used to launch them," Paller said. "There's no defense once the machines are under the attacker's control." Vixie said he kept the server at Internet Software Consortium operating by "pushing" the flood of data far enough away from his servers that legitimate traffic could flow around the obstruction. Such clogs still affect some Internet users by gumming up Internet communications somewhere else in the network. UUNET's Morrow said it is too early to tell what the attack bodes for the Internet in coming months. "This could be someone just messing around, but it could also be something much more serious. It's too soon to say," Morrow said. |
| NS |
| 10/23/02 at 10:45:32 |
| sofia |
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board |