Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Slightly Scary News For The Net-Dependant

According to an Associated Press report at Breitbart.com:

Hackers briefly overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic Tuesday in one of the most significant attacks against the Internet since 2002.

Experts said the unusually powerful attacks lasted as long as 12 hours but passed largely unnoticed by most computer users, a testament to the resiliency of the Internet. Behind the scenes, computer scientists worldwide raced to cope with enormous volumes of data that threatened to saturate some of the Internet's most vital pipelines.

It's comforting the Internet held up so well to the attacks. For those of us who rely heavily on the Net for news, information, and entertainment (you know, the necessities of daily life), any threat to the www world is something to make us sit up and take notice, but national security is at stake as well. Homeland Security put out a statement saying there doesn't seem to be an imminent threat, but, according to the AP, the department also '...confirmed it was monitoring what it called "anomalous" Internet traffic.' The article goes on to say, 'Among the targeted "root" servers that manage global Internet traffic were ones operated by the Defense Department and the Internet's primary oversight body.' There may not be an imminent threat, but any time somebody's targeting Defense Department anything, it's gonna make me a tad bit less comfortable, especially when they have a degree of success. The article isn't long. Go ahead and read the rest. Oh, and my vastly understated thought for the day? Hackers aren't nice people.

Hat tip: Instapundit