just on cnbc, ebay is under the same type of attack as yahoo and buy.com experienced recently.

al

-- al (alco@pathway.net), February 08, 2000

Answers

It's true!. eBay has been under a "denial of service" attack for several hours now and is still having problems as I write this at 9:12PM EST. I can only get in to their announcement board which has been discussing the ongoing problem.

-- Anne in TN (imnot@work.com), February 08, 2000.

Guess ebay is a little swifter on the rebound than Yahoo.. working fine as of 6:49 PST...

Or else they called Yahoo and got the filters instead of having to analyze from scratch, if it was the same hackers...

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), February 08, 2000.

Now Yahoo, eBay and Buy.com may all have been brought down by cyber attacks..it is possible. However, I offer this as food for thought. Wouldn't a great way to cover up problems(dare I say y2k)with servers/routing equipment be to just announce a big hack attack. Everybody buys it hook line and sinker.

Just a suggestion to think critically whenever PR people for big companies speak. Equipment failures bring PR nightmares, litigation and stockholder wrath. Cyber attacks bring sympathy....

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 08, 2000.

Oh, and if you think I'm being paranoid about the above post here's a quote from the latest story on the outages. The whole story with lots of information is posted a few threads up:

"Wall Street analysts have shown more tolerance for companies which are hit by outside hackers than those whose own systems have failed or whose data has been corrupted. Yahoo stock was up despite the raids, gaining $19.125 to stand at $373.125, in a day of strong trading in Internet issues. "Link:

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000208/ts/tech_hackers_2.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 08, 2000.

Good point about the DoS being a distraction from the real cause, such as router failures. The NSA also went down for 3 days due to router problems.

But hackers have been boasting that they can bring down the Internet at any time. They have been practicing and refining their skills. Soon they may be able to hold the Internet hostage.

China has also boasted that it can degrade our info infrastructure and has developed info-warrier armies. What is about to happen that could justify a sudden, concerted attack on major Internet sites?

-- Ceemeister (ceemeister@hotmail.com), February 08, 2000.

Yes, but, now Yahoo has an email bug problem!

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 08, 2000.

Yes; security is weak. No; It is not as weak as you might think. It pays to remember DoD built the Internet. DoD has always been a primary target. They (DoD) has done a LOT in the last three years to automate defenses.

The real problem in that civilian infrastructure is run by people who haven't got a clue about security on the Internet. They don't realize what can and indeed is being done by organized hacking every single day. Those who do realize this truth are very busy trying to figure out how to protect their own systems.

This problem has occured because we never built encryption into the Internet protocols from the beginning. We have an idiotic policy of treating encryption as a "weapon" and our government has failed to encourage and educate the "hobbiests" who have jumped into the ISP business without first getting an education into exactly what they are doing.

The end result is a fragile system which is easily disrupted. Now marketeers at the large companies haven't done a whole lot to help the situation. Neither have techies such as myself. We are not licensed but commercial and amature radio operators are licensed. Hell, plumbers are licensed but ISP's who deal with your privacy every single day are not.

What do you suppose is wrong with this picture?

My favorite joke about programmers is this, "Real programmers are constantly surprised that people will pay them do to what they would be doing for fun anyway." Speaks volumes about why hackers get into darned near any site they want to get into...

They get in because they want in more badly than the ISP wants to keep them out. They continue to get in because they want to more badly than ISP's who catch them want to bite the bullet and prosecute.

"There is no machine more secure than one which has a good operator who READS the logs." -- This is the statement I start EVERY security class with, and for very good reason.

-- Michael Erskine (Osiris@urbanna.net), February 08, 2000.