DoS attacks getting scary, CERT expert warns at NANOG meeting

Source: Security News Portal - SNPortal

Kevin Poulsen, writing for SecurityFocus.com reports that "Windows users and Internet routing equipment are the latest pawns of malicious intruders intent on launching denial of service attacks online, an expert from Carnegie Mellon's CERT Coordination Center warned network operators here Monday.

Attackers have begun favoring particular chunks of Internet address space that are more likely to contain Windows machines than others, said Kevin Houle, a researcher with the government-funded center, speaking to approximately 600 engineers and network administrators at a meeting of the North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG). "If I'm an intruder and I want to install my tools on Windows machines, its very easy to find subsections of the network to search," said Houle......

DoS attacks getting scary, CERT warns

By Kevin Poulsen

So-called distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks rely on an attacker's ability to install malicious agents on a large number of computers, and use them to simultaneously flood a victim with overwhelming traffic. The shift from Unix machines to Windows computers began in late 2000, said Houle, and has grown noticeably in recent months.

The mechanisms for controlling large numbers of compromised boxes have also changed, said Houle, becoming vastly more sophisticated since DDoS attacks began in 1999. Attackers increasingly use IRC -- the Internet's chat room systems -- to direct attacks, sometimes using domain name records as a kind of dead drop for directing their agents to a particular IRC server.

More disturbing to network operators, attackers have taking over the machines that route and direct the flow of Internet traffic, to use them as weapons, Houle said.

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