Yep. They Almost Brought Down the Internet… But, They Didn’t!

Security expert, Steve Gibson, said not long ago that you could bring down the entire Internet by attacking the root DNS servers. well, somebody did it. Just like he said. BUT… the redundancy that makes the Internet work also made it impervious to permanent harm! Hooray for the good guys!

UltraDNS attack targeted G and L root servers

“Reports confirmed by the AP (Associated Press) and RIPE prove that two of the thirteen root domain servers were taken down during attack Tuesday. Servers G and L failed to respond to ninety percent of the requests made to them. The two servers are managed by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and the United States Department of Defense. There are reports, again confirmed by RIPE, that two other servers aside from G and L were slowed by the attack. These servers did not fail under the strain of the vast amounts of data sent to them. The denial of service was carried out by Botnets, zombie like computers, to spread the load of the attack across all thirteen of the root servers. What is known is that the attack centered on ‘.org’ domains and UltraDNS. UltraDNS is the company who manages many of the ‘.org’ domains. The attacks, the largest since 2002, lasted over twelve hours. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement, ‘There is no credible intelligence to suggest an imminent threat to the homeland or our computing systems at this time.'”

Wow!