Link Good site, many links. ZDTV is covering this extensively also.

-- Kyle (fordtbonly@aol.com), February 09, 2000

Answers

we were hacked first, REMEMBER!!! Lisa Zach and all...!!!...lol

-- Vern (bacon17@ibm.net), February 09, 2000.

From tomorrow's Electronic Telegraph:

Hackers cripple web sites with 'junk' messages By Mark Ward and Simon Davis

HACKERS are continuing to play havoc with some of the most popular web sites on the internet using an attack that turns the computer network on itself.

On Monday, the online directory Yahoo! was out of action for three hours as hackers flooded the site with bogus requests for data. On Tuesday popular sites such as Amazon, CNN, eBay and Buy.com were all hit by the same kind of attack. Buy.com was targeted on the day that its stock first went on offer on the US stock market.

Unlike other "hacks" these incidents do not lead to attackers gaining access or entry into the targeted computers. The hackers put the web sites off line using a "denial of service" attack. This bombards a web site with more requests for information than it can cope with, effectively cutting off access for anyone else. The tactic used is similar to telephone lines being tied up by too many calls.

The hackers' motive appears to be little more than to frustrate web users and to embarrass some of the biggest names on the internet. At Amazon.com, the world's leading e-commerce site, its spokesman, Bill Curry, said: "A large amount of junk traffic was directed to our site, resulting in degraded service for an hour."

No one has come forward to claim responsibility for the attacks but the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Centre has traced hits to powerful computers in Boston, New York and Chicago. Tracing the hackers could be difficult because of the huge numbers of machines drafted into the attacks. Paul Cronin, a consultant at computer security firm CenturyCom, said: "You can be attacked from anywhere on the internet at any given time."

The software to mount these attacks has existed for years but they have become more popular with hackers lately because a way has been found to launch the attacks from lots of computers instead of just one. The attack on Yahoo! was launched by 50 computers.

Hackers have developed programs with names such as Trinoo, Tribe Flood Network and Stacheldraht (German for barbed wire) to find vulnerable computers on the internet and then use those to launch an attack.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), February 09, 2000.