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[FYI] Denial of Service



http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/48/ns-12025.html

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Wed, 08 Dec 1999 13:28:49 GMT

Will Knight  


New denial of service attack involves simultaneous strikes from large 
number of remote machines  

Further evidence of a new type denial of service (DoS) attacks with 
unparalleled potential for causing havoc has been uncovered by 
Internet Security Systems (ISS).  

The attack involves co-ordinating a simultaneous DoS strike from an 
unusually large number of compromised and remotely controlled 
machines. ISS has issued an alert warning that a number of high 
capacity networks have already been subjected to this radical new 
type of onslaught.  

This new approach to attacking a network was uncovered at the 
National Information Systems Security Conference in the US. Now, 
however, there is more evidence of how significant the approach is 
becoming.  

The ISS alert describes the attack in uncompromising terms, calling 
it "more powerful than any previous DoS attack observed on the 
Internet," and adding that "ISS considers this attack as a high risk 
since it can potentially impact a wide number of organisations. It 
has proven to be successful and is difficult to defend against."  

[...]

One professional security consultant, Ian Johnston-Bryden of Oceanus 
security says that although this isn't a ground-breaking discovery, 
it does illustrate an important direction because it makes it far 
more difficult trace an attack efficiently. "It's certainly quite 
easy to put this sort of thing together," he says. "But it is very 
difficult to be completely sure that it is actually a denial of 
service attack. I'm fairly sure it's going to be used much more for 
political attacks on Web sites. In HM government this is something 
that they are becoming increasingly concerned about."  


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