Attorney General Janet Reno announced earlier this week that the FBI has launched an investigation into the source of the denial-of-service attacks.?Reno said the U.S.?Department of Justice still doesn't know who instigated the attacks, where they originated, how many computers were involved or the motives of the perpetrators.?But they were effective.?"We experienced 1GB/sec., and we can handle 100M bit/sec.?on a typical strong day operating at 30% capacity.?During the attack, we had eight to 10 times regular capacity, and no one can sustain that," said Greg Hawkins, CEO of Buy.com Inc.?in Aliso Viejo, Calif.?Hawkins said the attack, which came from multiple locations, overwhelmed the site's monitoring software, which scans for unusual traffic loads and blocks invasions from one IP address.?U.S.?Department of Commerce Secretary William M.?Daley warned that sites remain vulnerable.?"There is no surefire defense," said Daley, who appealed to the computer industry to improve security monitoring and intrusion response to detect malicious code before it can do damage.?"It points to vulnerabilities that need to be addressed in the new world we are going to," said Daley.?"The private sector has a greater stake in making sure there are protections than we do." The online assaults began Monday on Santa Clara, Calif.-based Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo.com, which was blasted with packet traffic at 1GB/sec.?-- more than some Web sites receive in a year.?The site was down for three hours.?On Tuesday, San Jose-based eBay Inc., Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc., Buy.com and Atlanta-based CNN.com were hit with the same type of attack.?Palo Alto, Calif.-based ETrade Group Inc.?and ZDNet Group in San Francisco were the victims on Wednesday.?In addition, Excite@Home suffered a brief denial-of-service attack this week, according to a company spokeswoman.?The attack began around 7 p.m.?PST and lasted less than an hour.?Read more...
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