Indiana Internet provider among those commandeered by hackers

CROWN POINT, Ind. (AP) -- The president of a local Internet service provider said it was hijacked by hackers twice this week as part of apparently coordinated electronic assaults on the popular auction site eBay.

At the same time dozens of other service providers were being hit, hackers left Icon Group Inc.'s computers "just dead in the water" on Tuesday, said Bill Walters, president of the company.

Another hacker attack shut down the system Wednesday morning.

Customers who tried to log onto Icon Group experienced extremely slow service or no connection at all, said Walters, adding that customer accounts were never compromised.

Walters said he notified the FBI and his software vendor of the attack, then adjusted his network and installed new software to try to prevent future attacks.

Still, he said it's impossible to completely safeguard the system.

"I'm sure it could happen again," he told the Gary Post-Tribune. Telephone calls to the company before business hours today went unanswered.

Walters said hackers picked his system to attack eBay because of the company's high Internet capacity. At one point, about 38 percent of the company's network was throwing data at the auction's Web site.

The company's computers alone could not shut down eBay, and it's likely that dozens of systems participated in the assault, he said.

Other Internet service providers also were commandeered by the hackers, inconveniencing millions of Internet users.

The apparently coordinated attacks spread to ETrade, ZDNet, Amazon.com, CNN, Buy.com, Yahoo! and other major sites -- all of them disturbed by a barrage of messages.

The attacks, called "denial of service attacks," appeared intended to slow down or completely block Internet service to well-traveled sites.

Federal officials urged businesses to install protective software and take other security precautions.

http://www.starnews.com/wire/indiana/k19ae5l0.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 11, 2000