Global internet slows after 'biggest attack in history'

[dipsydoodle]

Source: BBC News

The internet around the world has been slowed down in what security experts are describing as the biggest cyber-attack in history.

A row between a spam-fighting group and hosting firm has sparked retaliation attacks flooding core infrastructure.

It is having an impact on widely used services like Netflix - and experts worry it could escalate to affect banking and email services.

Five national cyber-police-forces are investigating the attacks.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21954636

[SemperEadem]

1. Hmmm... my computer was slow yesterday....

[lib2DaBone]

2. I thought the net was running crazy today?

I was blaming it on my computer.

It figures.. they take the best thing for mankind to come along in a long time, and they turn it into a war zone.

[RKP5637]

3. So sad. Humanity is its own worst enemy. n/t

[Sirveri]

11. At least it's about stopping spammers...

Way more important than most of the BS actual wars we've fought over the last couple of centuries.

[MrScorpio]

4. I've got a show this Friday

They better get this shit fixed by then

[BeyondGeography]

5. Netflix wouldn't work for me yesterday and I was blaming my hotel

Worked fine this morning though. I'm out West living on East coast time, waking up at 3 a.m. Lost without it.

[AllyCat]

6. Netflix is working today.

I thought my 'puter was slow yesterday. Downloaded new versions of CCleaner and SpywareBlaster and it ran great after that. Had no clue it was the web.

[TinkerTot55]

7. Husband works at a state university here in the Upper Midwest.....

...can't get work done because internet keeps cutting out.

Wonder if it's related? This has never happened before.

[L0oniX]

8. I wish they'd go after that spamming mutha fucka in Utah. If I can find him ...they can. n/t

@df2.activesendonline.com
@6.dealdoneonline.com
@f.keyturnsite.com
@FLYFARSITE.NET
@f.sendmailsolutions.net
@1.mailtakehosting.in

[Ian David]

9. Redtube was running very slowly all day. It took me nearly an hour to masturbate. n/t

[Incitatus]

12. WTF?

You should always have some porn on your HD in case of an Internet outage.

[Ian David]

13. Yes, but then it takes forever to get my computer back from the shop when it has to be fixed. n/t

[Ghost Dog]

10. These guys are just mad. They think they should be allowed to spam.

A Dutch web-hosting company caused disruption and the global slowdown of the internet, according to a not-for-profit anti-spam organization.

The interruptions came after Spamhaus, a spam-fighting group based in Geneva, temporarily added the Dutch firm, CyberBunker, to a blacklist that is used by e-mail providers to weed out spam.

Cyberbunker is housed in a five-story former NATO bunker and famously offers its services to any website “except child porn and anything related to terrorism". As such it has often been linked to behaviour that anti-spam blacklist compilers have condemned.

Users of Cyberbunker retaliated with a huge 'denial of service attack'. These work by trying to make a network unavailable to its intended users,overloading a server with coordinated requests to access it. At one point, 300 billion bits per second were being sent by a network of computers, making this the biggest attack ever.

The attack was particularly potent because it exploited the 'domain name system', which acts like the telephone directory of the internet and is used every time a web address is entered into a computer.

Patrick Gilmore, of digital content provider Akamai Networks told the New York Times that Cyberbunker's users did not believe spamming users was wrong. “These guys are just mad. To be frank, they got caught," he alleged. "They think they should be allowed to spam.” ...

/... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/9957063/Web-slows-under-biggest-attack-ever.html