A Case of DoS Attack on Root Servers

A 'denial of service' attack on February 6, 2007 hit the 13 servers that coordinate Internet traffic around the world. The attacker is said to have made an impact on three of these servers arranged at the top of the hierarchy. However, none seem to have halted its work entirely.

Experts at Sophos suggest that hackers might have taken control over users' computers to turn them into zombie computers and build botnets, so that they could trigger traffic through the Internet's Domain Name Server (DNS). They observed, while PC owners may not have known that their computers were compromised it would have suspended access to all websites and delivery of e-mails globally, if the attack were successful.

These zombie computers could result in the break down of the web, said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos in a company press release. However, while the bounce back of root servers into normal functioning is commendable, a lot need to take place to correct the problem, i.e., the sloppy attitude of some users to adopt security measures, said Cluley.

He further notes that in the present days, society frequently uses the Internet for conducting communication. It is therefore surprising to find how people reliant on the web may have been the ones whose computers could be responsible for its collapse.

Cluley said, most of the attacks originated in South Korea but that doesn't mean the hackers were also situated there. They could have been from any part of the world.

According to Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer at the SANS Institute in news for InformationWeek, the attack was a distributed 'DoS', where information from all around the world hit the root servers.

Botnets comprise of infected computers called zombies that lose command to a malicious hacker who overloads websites with a continuous flow of junk e-mails.

Cluley continued to say that hackers launching the attack might have more of a malicious intent than a financial motive on their minds. Whatever may be the purpose of the assault, every individual needs to deploy proper defenses on their PCs to protect them from cyber crime.

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» SPAMfighter News - 2/15/2007