Denial-of-service attacks expected
Source: CNN
There is a high probability that the U.S. critical computer infrastructure, such as the Web site of the U.S. Department of Defense, is being targeted for Distributed Denial of Service attacks by cyberprotestors, according to a warning issued Friday by the National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC). The center is the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation's cybersecurity arm.
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are those in which a target computer system is flooded with false requests for information to the point that it is unable to respond to legitimate requests, denying them service. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, the more damaging relative of DoS attacks, are those that use multiple computers worldwide to launch their attacks and are harder to combat. DdoS attacks knocked high-profile sites such as Amazon.com, Yahoo.com, and EBay.com offline over the course of a week in February 2000.
Online protests, both pro- and anti-United States, have been frequent since September 11, but have largely been limited to Web site defacements, the NIPC said. Although the DDoS activity that has gone on so far has been minimal, and mostly limited to attacks between protest groups, protestors have indicated that U.S. infrastructure will be a target, the NIPC warning said. But businesses and organizations unrelated to the September 11 attacks also could be targets, the NIPC said.
