[ISN] Attack On Internet Called Largest Ever

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 23:02:57 PDT

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    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A828-2002Oct22.html
    
    By David McGuire and Brian Krebs
    washingtonpost.com Staff Writers
    Tuesday, October 22, 2002; 5:40 PM 
    
    The heart of the Internet sustained its largest and most sophisticated
    attack ever, starting late Monday, according to officials at key
    online backbone organizations.
    
    Around 5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, a "distributed denial of service"  
    (DDOS) attack struck the 13 "root servers" that provide the primary
    roadmap for almost all Internet communications. Despite the scale of
    the attack, which lasted about an hour, Internet users worldwide were
    largely unaffected, experts said.
    
    FBI officials would not speculate on who might have planned or carried
    out the attack.
    
    David Wray, a spokesman for the FBI's National Infrastructure
    Protection Center (NIPC), said the bureau is "aware of the reports and
    looking into it."
    
    DDOS attacks overwhelm networks with an onslaught of data until they
    cannot be used. According to security experts, the incident probably
    was the result of multiple attacks, in which attackers concentrate the
    power of many computers against a single network to prevent it from
    operating.
    
    "This was the largest and most complex DDOS attack ever against the
    root server system," said a source at one of the organizations
    responsible for operating the root servers.
    
    Ordinary Internet users experienced no slowdowns or outages because of
    safeguards built into the Internet's architecture. A longer, more
    extensive attack could have seriously damaged worldwide electronic
    communications, the source said.
    
    Internet Software Consortium Inc. Chairman Paul Vixie said that if
    more servers went down, and if the hackers sustained their hour-long
    strike a bit longer, Internet users around the world would have begun
    to see delays and failed connections.
    
    Chris Morrow, network security engineer for UUNET, said "This is
    probably the most concerted attack against the Internet infrastructure
    that we've seen." UUNET is the service provider for two of the world's
    13 root servers. A unit of WorldCom Inc., it also handles
    approximately half of the world's Internet traffic.
    
    DDOS attacks are some of the most common and easiest to perpetrate,
    but the size and scope of Monday's strike set it apart.
    
    Vixie said only four or five of the 13 servers were able to withstand
    the attack and remain available to legitimate Internet traffic
    throughout the strike. "It was an attack against all 13 servers, which
    is a little more rare than an attack against any one of us," he said.
    
    The server Vixie operates was available throughout the attack, he
    said.
    
    Internet addressing giant VeriSign Inc., which operates the most
    important server from an undisclosed Northern Virginia location,
    reported no outages.
    
    "VeriSign expects that these sort of attacks will happen and VeriSign
    was prepared," company spokesman Brian O'Shaughnessy said.
    
    Vixie said he was unwilling to compare the attack to others he has
    witnessed in more than two decades of involvement with Internet
    architecture, but said it was "the largest in recent memory."
    
    The root servers, about 10 of which are located in the United States,
    serve as a sort of master directory for the Internet.
    
    The Domain Name System (DNS), which converts complex Internet protocol
    addressing codes into the words and names that form e-mail and Web
    addresses, relies on the servers to tell computers around the world
    how to reach key Internet domains.
    
    At the top of the root server hierarchy is the "A" root server, which
    every 12 hours generates a critical file that tells the other 12
    servers what Internet domains exist and where they can be found.
    
    VeriSign manages its servers under contracts with the Commerce
    Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers (ICANN),
    which manages the DNS.
    
    One rung below the root servers in the Internet hierarchy are the
    servers that house Internet domains such as dot-com, dot-biz and
    dot-info.
    
    The DNS is built so that eight or more of the world's 13 root servers
    must fail before ordinary Internet users start to see slowdowns.
    
    "There are various kinds of attacks all the time on all sorts of
    infrastructure, and the basic design of the Internet is such that it
    is designed to withstand those attacks," said ICANN Vice President
    Louis Touton. "We're not aware of any users that were in any way
    affected.
    
    "Obviously the prevalence of attacks does make it important to have
    increased focus on the need for security and stability of the
    Internet," he added.
    
    Most often, the computers used in the DDOS assaults have been
    commandeered by hackers either manually or remotely with the help of
    automated software tools that scan millions of computers for known
    security holes. These computers often belong to unsuspecting home
    users.
    
    Little can be done to insulate targets from such attacks, and some of
    the world's most powerful companies have been targeted in the past. In
    February 2000, Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo, and a host of other big-name
    e-commerce sites came to a grinding halt for several hours due to DDOS
    attacks.
    
    "Only the richest can defend themselves against this type of attack,
    and most of them can't withstand a concerted attack," said Alan
    Paller, research director at the SANS Institute, a nonprofit security
    research and training group that often works with federal
    investigators to track computer virus writers. Paller also was the
    lead expert witness at the trial of "Mafiaboy," the Canadian teenager
    who was ultimately convicted of the February 2000 attacks.
    
    "The only way to stop such attacks is to fix the vulnerabilities on
    the machines that ultimately get taken over and used to launch them,"  
    Paller said. "There's no defense once the machines are under the
    attacker's control."
    
    Vixie said he kept the server at Internet Software Consortium
    operating by "pushing" the flood of data far enough away from his
    servers that legitimate traffic could flow around the obstruction.  
    Such clogs still affect some Internet users by gumming up Internet
    communications somewhere else in the network.
    
    UUNET's Morrow said it is too early to tell what the attack bodes for
    the Internet in coming months. "This could be someone just messing
    around, but it could also be something much more serious. It's too
    soon to say," Morrow said.
    
    washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Robert MacMillan contributed to this
    article.
    
    
    
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