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View Full Version : Did the internet crash?


Royal Dragon
10-22-2002, 07:16 PM
Is this for real??

http://www.msnbc.com/news/824620.asp?pne=46746&0ct=-301#BODY
joedoe
10-22-2002, 08:52 PM
It's in the news - it must have happened :)
Ford Prefect
10-23-2002, 04:44 AM
Most weren't effected because of site cache'ing. Dunno who would do this since most hackers I know are pro-free, anonymous internet usage.
txwingchun
10-23-2002, 05:57 AM
Just some script kiddies I bet.
FatherDog
10-23-2002, 09:09 AM
This did, in fact, happen, although actual disruption was very slight.

The 13 internet root servers are the servers that maintain the 'domain lists'; the names that correspond to machine addresses, and allow us to access websites by typing in names, instead of ip addresses.

Your local ISP checks against the root servers at regular intervals, and caches the information. Since the disruption only lasted an hour, the caches for local ISPs were still there, and there wasn't really any difference for end users.

If the root servers were down long enough for the ISP caches to degrade, you wouldn't be able to get to places through their registered domain names, even though they'd still be online... for instance, typing

http://www.kungfumagazine.com
http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com
http://forum.kungfumagazine.com/forum/index.php

wouldn't work. But typing

http://208.55.108.187
http://168.143.91.211
http://128.121.114.26/forum/index.php

WOULD still work... it would just be an unreasonable pain in the ass. ;)

So the Internet would still be there... just much, much more difficult to get to.

Since the attack only lasted an hour, it's likely it wasn't a serious attempt, but rather a person or group of people testing to see how the root servers would respond to such an attack. In a way, it's good, because it forces the administrators of those servers to now realize that such an attack would be a serious problem for them, and start taking proactive countermeasures to deal with the eventuality of it happening again.
dezhen2001
10-23-2002, 06:13 PM
how come u know all this fatherdog? :eek: :D

dawood
Shadow Dragon
10-23-2002, 06:39 PM
dawood.

Nearly everybody that works with the net is aware of those facts.

Agree, that it was a good wake-upcall, BTW, it was not the first attack on those servers. Another one happened some time back.

DOS attacks are nasty, but the people that are really to blame are the ones that run on-secured PC's when accessing the Net and thus allow people to download DOS Software and similar nasty pieces of code.

When the Hacker wants to run a DOS attack he simply sends out the "activation command" and EVERY PC with that Bug on it will hit that specific server with "rubbish" requests causing a disruption of Service (DOS).

DOS attacks are hard to trace as often the triggering PC is not part of the attack.

Cheers.
dezhen2001
10-24-2002, 05:01 AM
Shadow Dragon: hey buddy i was just teasing :) How are ya these days anyway? i havent heard from you in a long time... :)

dawood
Shadow Dragon
10-24-2002, 05:24 AM
Hi Dawood.

Busy at work and MA studies,
:D :D

Kinda giving the Net a break and try to concentrate on the real world.

Will E-Mail you soon.
dezhen2001
10-24-2002, 05:27 AM
im busy studying as well as you can see ;):D
hope all is well and can hear form you soon!

dawood