wow, seven to nine of the thirteen DNS root servers
were flood-attacked on Monday, and nobody noticed. That’s
cool.
… experts said the attack, which started about 4:45 p.m. EDT
Monday, transmitted data to each targeted root server 30 to 40 times
normal amounts. One said that just one additional failure would have
disrupted e-mails and Web browsing across parts of the Internet.
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 19:59:06 -0400
From: (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: So like, a third of the rootservers went down and we didn’t even notice.
Yea, I certainly didn’t notice. Its cool and scary really — Cool
that the whole net didn’t cease to be (even for an hour) and bad that
9 rootservers died period.
Scary mofo shit.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2002/10/22/national1907EDT0772.DTL
Powerful attack cripples majority of key Internet computers
TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, October 22, 2002
(10-22) 16:07 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) —
An unusually powerful electronic attack briefly crippled nine of the
13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic this week,
officials disclosed Tuesday. But most Internet users didn’t notice
because the attack only lasted one hour.
The FBI and White House were investigating. One official described the
attack Monday as the most sophisticated and large-scale assault
against these crucial computers in the history of the Internet. The
origin of the attack was not known.
Seven of the 13 servers failed to respond to legitimate network
traffic and two others failed intermittently during the attack,
officials confirmed.
The FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center was “aware of the
denial of service attack and is addressing this matter,” spokesman
Steven Berry said.
Service was restored after experts enacted defensive measures and the
attack suddenly stopped.
The 13 computers are spread geographically across the globe as
precaution against physical disasters and operated by U.S. government
agencies, universities, corporations and private organizations.
“As best we can tell, no user noticed and the attack was dealt with
and life goes on,” said Louis Touton, vice president for the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet’s key
governing body.
Brian O’Shaughnessy, a spokesman for VeriSign Inc., which operates two
of the 13 computers in northern Virginia, said “these sorts of attacks
will happen.”
“We were prepared, we responded quickly,” O’Shaughnessy said. “We
proactively cooperated with our fellow root server operators and the
appropriate authorities.”
Computer experts who manage some of the affected computers, speaking
on condition of anonymity, said they were cooperating with the White
House through its Office of Homeland Security and the President’s
Critical Infrastructure Protection Board.
Richard Clarke, President Bush’s top cyber-security adviser and head
of the protection board, has warned for months that an attack against
the Internet’s 13 so- called root server computers could be
dramatically disruptive.
These experts said the attack, which started about 4:45 p.m. EDT
Monday, transmitted data to each targeted root server 30 to 40 times
normal amounts. One said that just one additional failure would have
disrupted e-mails and Web browsing across parts of the Internet.
Monday’s attack wasn’t more disruptive because many Internet providers
and large corporations and organizations routinely store, or “cache,”
popular Web directory information for better performance.
“The Internet was designed to be able to take outages, but when you
take the root servers out, you don’t know how long you can work
without them,” said Alan Paller, director of research at the SANS
Institute, a security organization based in Bethesda, Md.
Although the Internet theoretically can operate with only a single
root server, its performance would slow if more than four root servers
failed for any appreciable length of time.
In August 2000, four of the 13 root servers failed for a brief period
because of a technical glitch.
A more serious problem involving root servers occurred in July 1997
after experts transferred a garbled directory list to seven root
servers and failed to correct the problem for four hours. Traffic on
much of the Internet ground to a halt.
—
Best regards,
bitbitch (spam-protected)
