Monday afternoon, the internet came under attack according to this AP story. A person or persons unknown launched a coordinated denial of service attack against the 13 root DNS servers worldwide. When “defensive measures” were taken, the attack stopped. Fortunately, no one but the root server administrators noticed. The FBI is investigating. Is it Al-Qaida, a German hacking club, or a couple of bored teenagers in Encino? Who knows.
The problem is that the internet was designed to be a network between DOD computers that could survive nuclear attack, and security is consequently an afterthought because it was assumed based on the DOD having possession of the networked computers. This same assumption stayed with us when the internet was set up as a network between university computers. Now that any bozo can run an internet server from anywhere, we need a less trusting system.
