Internet attacked on again

[Lowly Noob]

did anyone else read popular mechanics and see the story about the hackers that tried to send hundreds of packets to the root servers to see if they could crash the internet( it didnt work obvioulsly)

 

[lorothrigs]

did anyone else read popular mechanics and see the story about the hackers that tried to send hundreds of packets to the root servers to see if they could crash the internet( it didnt work obvioulsly)

I did not hear about this. I imagine it probably failed miserably because I'm just gonna take a wild guess and assume the root servers are incredibly secure and have software designed to ignore invalid packets and such.

 

[GST_Nemisis]

closest it ever got was probably ILOVEYOU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILOVEYOU

 

[lorothrigs]

Damn, that virus pretty much owned everyone. <3

 

[brad.dude03]

Yes, I definetly heard about the ILOVEYOU virus, although thankfully it never managed to reach me That would be pretty scary, knowing that there is a hacker out there that has the balls (and the skills) enough to take down the root servers that power the world wide web....

 

[GST_Nemisis]

remember sasser? that could have been real bad but the guy didnt add malicious code so it didnt have the same effect as ILOVEYOU. you cant argue with billions of dollars of damage.

 

[brad.dude03]

This sort of reminds me of an MSN worm, but on a lesser scale? Ever heard of the Ratemyballs worm? This is what io'm talking about:

- Like ILOVEYOU, Ratemyballs uses psychology to get people to buy into it. Once it infects a system, it not only loads other viruses (I've seen people to detect up to 8 of them after being infected with the worm) but it sends messages to everyone on your friends list (without opening any windows or anything, so you have no idea whatsoever) with a message that's like ":O www.ratemyballs.com/youremailadresspenis

Naturally, everyone is gonna click on it cuz their like wtf is this site that has my email address on it

Of course it redirects and downloads a comd prompt file, which then prompts you to open it. Since most of the people that clicked the link to begin with were idiots, it isn't too much to say that most of them clicked on this executable as well. After clicking on it, the worm is in your system and immediately starts sending out its BS.

Thankfully, the worm is fairly easy to get rid of, as it sits in your temp folder, so all you have to do is delete all of your temporary files and you're good to go. The viruses that it loads in, however, are another story entirely...

 

[Lowly Noob]

whole story from popular mechanics

Q: I heard recently that some hackers tried to take down the entire Internet. Is that possible?

A: Hack the entire Internet? Hard to say. But yes, it has been tried. You may have experienced a pronounced sluggishness on the Web on Feb. 6 of this year. For several hours that day, a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was directed at six of the 13 “root” servers that form the backbone of the Internet. Two of them were severely affected. What? You didn’t notice? Actually, it’s not surprising — few people did. And so, we all got further proof of the robust nature of the Internet’s distributed networking structure.

According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the company that manages much of the structure of the Internet and runs one of the two compromised servers, the attack likely originated in the Asia-Pacific region. The identity of the hackers is still unknown, but they utilized hundreds of hijacked “zombie” PCs to flood the root servers with billions of packets of worthless data with the intention of overwhelming the Internet as a whole.

To understand the attack, you need to know what the root servers actually do. Everything sent over the Internet is divided into packets of data. To get where they’re going, those packets carry domain name addresses, which are checked against directories stored on any number of lower-level servers. If those servers don’t have the address that a packet is looking for, they refer the packet up to a higher-level server. Root servers are the top level in the domain name system (DNS) architecture, listing where on the Internet all the directories for domains — such as .com, .net or .uk — can be found. Most packets never reach one of the 13 root servers, but the system wouldn’t work without them.

When the February DDoS attack hit six of the servers, the administrators who run the servers blocked packets that were obviously part of the attack. In addition, some of the root servers were protected by a load-balancing technol*ogy called Anycast that distributes packet queries among the servers and across multiple machines. (In reality, each of the 13 servers is made up of a number of machines distributed around the world.) This reduced the stress on any one server. These two strategies kept normal traffic on the Web relatively undisturbed. So why the number 13? It’s because the Internet is run by a coven of witches. Just kidding. Early in the history of the Internet, the User Datagram Protocol, the format in which DNS requests are made, was set at 512 bytes — just enough space to hold the 13 root server addresses.

 

[Sacrimo]

Didn't reach me, duh, I got like 40 funcional firewallz.

 

[brad.dude03]

Wtf does having a firewall have anything to do with this? And I highly doubt you have 40.

 

[Sacrimo]

want prove? I got the links to them right now

 

[GST_Nemisis]

firewalls usally conflict if you have more than 2, one software and one hardware. this is because of their interaction with the internet and also their interaction with the windows system. post a screen shot of your start> all programs menu and i might believe you. even if you do its totally unnecessary because one hardware and one software is all you need, especially with some smart port configuration and sensible web use. anyways, there are only like 20 top known firewalls, from the big cheeses (norton/mcafee) to the sweet freebees (sygate/AVG). where are you getting the rest from?

 

[Sacrimo]

firewalls usally conflict if you have more than 2, one software and one hardware. this is because of their interaction with the internet and also their interaction with the windows system. post a screen shot of your start> all programs menu and i might believe you. even if you do its totally unnecessary because one hardware and one software is all you need, especially with some smart port configuration and sensible web use. anyways, there are only like 20 top known firewalls, from the big cheeses (norton/mcafee) to the sweet freebees (sygate/AVG). where are you getting the rest from?

Aha, so thats why I got so much lag on my computer, ty for the info, I just narrowed it down to 2.

 

[Teh_Ephy]

Aha, so thats why I got so much lag on my computer, ty for the info, I just narrowed it down to 2.

i lol'd. i'm sorry but i did.

 

[lorothrigs]

When the February DDoS attack hit six of the servers, the administrators who run the servers blocked packets that were obviously part of the attack. In addition, some of the root servers were protected by a load-balancing technol*ogy called Anycast that distributes packet queries among the servers and across multiple machines. (In reality, each of the 13 servers is made up of a number of machines distributed around the world.) This reduced the stress on any one server. These two strategies kept normal traffic on the Web relatively undisturbed. So why the number 13? It’s because the Internet is run by a coven of witches. Just kidding. Early in the history of the Internet, the User Datagram Protocol, the format in which DNS requests are made, was set at 512 bytes — just enough space to hold the 13 root server addresses.

Damn I was pretty close as to why it failed miserably. = /

 

[Sacrimo]

i lol'd. i'm sorry but i did.

idiot, I was.

 

[Teh_Ephy]

idiot, I was.

um sorry, but you were what? i said i was sorry, but it is ironic, and i still think that it's funny that you lagged your computer out with firewalls.

 

[Sacrimo]

um sorry, but you were what? i said i was sorry, but it is ironic, and i still think that it's funny that you lagged your computer out with firewalls.

Idiot, I was

 

[HappyTauren]

dudes.

 

[Teh_Ephy]

you were an idiot? lol if you're intentionally trying to lose me it's working. i get that english isn't your original language, so i don't know if you switching the order of words around is intentional or not...

 

[Xigo-Xigo]

I don't think I got it...didn't really check...