Hackers bid to disable internet

Published on Wednesday 7 February 2007 11:59

HACKERS overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic, in one of the most significant attacks against the internet since 2002.

Experts said the unusually powerful attack lasted as long as 12 hours, but passed largely unnoticed by most computer users - a testament to the internet's resilience.

Behind the scenes, computer scientists around the world raced to cope with enormous volumes of data that threatened to saturate some of the web's most vital pipelines. The US Homeland Security Department confirmed it was monitoring what it called "anomalous" internet traffic.

"There is no credible intelligence to suggest an imminent threat to the homeland or our computing systems at this time," the department said.

The motive for the attacks was unclear, said Californian computer expert Duane Wessels. "It was maybe to show off or just be disruptive; it doesn't seem to be extortion or anything like that," he said.

Other experts said vast amounts of rogue data were traced to South Korea. The attacks appeared to target UltraDNS, the firm that operates servers managing traffic for websites ending in "org" and other suffixes.