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Why BitsBlog Was Down for a While Today

I suspected a DOS attack on DNS servers, somewhere. Turns out I was right. I could see my server’s IP address, and converse with it on that level, but that was all. I even issued a trouble ticket to my ISP, but withdrew it when I saw what was what. So, around an hour back, I see this in my mailbox…

WASHINGTON -AP- [1] 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.

Other experts said the hackers appeared to disguise their origin, but vast amounts of rogue data in the attacks were traced to South Korea.

The attacks appeared to target UltraDNS, the company that operates servers managing traffic for Web sites ending in “org” and some other suffixes, experts said. Officials with NeuStar Inc., which owns UltraDNS, confirmed only that it had observed an unusual increase in traffic.

It seems clear that one of those suffixes was “*.US”….

As to who was the target, the story makes mention of it, but downplays it….

Among the targeted “root” servers that manage global Internet traffic were ones operated by the Defense Department and the Internet’s primary oversight body.

Ummmm… Yeah. I think we may have identified the target.  And, much as I’d like it to be that way, I wasn’t it.