Massive attack on web root servers

Large-scale DDoS barrage hits top-level DNS machines.

An exceptionally large Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack took place yesterday, targeting the root DNS servers at the core of the Internet.

Though little detail has yet emerged about the attack, it is rumoured to have originated from South Korea, and is thought to have caused temporary outages in at least three of the 13 root servers. Those serving .org domains are said to have been particularly affected, as well as US Department of Defense hardware. Web service company UltraDNS, responsible for many of these servers, has confirmed a spike in traffic.

No purpose has yet been discovered for the launching of the attack, which is thought to have lasted around 12 hours but had minimal effect on actual web connectivity thanks to improvements in distributing workloads. Suggested reasons have included testing botnets and pure malice.

The SANS Internet Storm Center has put up a brief message, here, and hope to provide more information as it becomes available.

07 February 2007

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