[ISN] Foxnews.com, Other Sites Attacked

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Mon Jun 17 2002 - 02:09:37 PDT

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    Forwarded from: William Knowles <wkat_private>
    
    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,55380,00.html
    
    Sunday, June 16, 2002
    
    Foxnews.com and a number of other leading Web sites this week came
    under an apparent denial of service cyberattack, which disrupted
    service to hundreds of thousands of Internet users.
    
    The attacks at Foxnews.com began on Thursday and caused intermittent
    outages and slowdowns on the site before normal service was restored
    Friday evening.
    
    The source of the attack on Foxnews.com and the others sites was not
    clear, but officials were actively investigating.
    
    Among the other sites affected by the attack were
    theweatherchannel.com, espn.com and ABCNEWS.com.
    
    Cyber-security experts at the sites involved were examining the
    possibility a so-called "syn" attack was responsible for the problems.  
    In such an attack, a hacker or hackers use hundreds or even thousands
    of computers to bombard requests to a target's servers.
    
    In just a matter of minutes, the requests can completely overwhelm a
    target's server, blocking out legitimate users and rendering the site
    completely or partly inaccessible. Such attacks are illegal.
    
    Foxnews.com and the other affected sites have notified federal law
    enforcement officials of the situation. Officials at the CERT
    Coordination Center, an Internet watchdog group, are also looking into
    matter.
    
    In 2000, some of the world's largest news, information and e-commerce
    sites came under a sustained and coordinated denial of service attack
    that was eventually traced to a Canadian teen-ager. Cyber-security
    officials have since instituted a series of measures designed to stem
    such incidents, but concede there is no guarantee all such attacks can
    be prevented in the future.
    
    
     
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