Hackers targeted ICANN

It has emerged that a concerted DDoS attack by cyberhackers attemped to disrupt the heart of the internet earlier this week.

A Distributed Denial Of Service (DDoS) attack can involve tens of thousands of PCs - usually hacked PC’s networked together - which then try to flood a target server network with useless information, until the target is overloaded and ceases to function.

The attack this week targeted the internet’s core DNS servers - those responsible for ensuring that websites and email works in the first place.

Targets included ICANN, the US Defense Department, and UltraDNS, who together help oversee the proper placement of .com, .net, and .org domain names on the internet.

However, the attack remained invivisible due to the diligence of hundreds of root server admins, who helped ensure that the attacks did not impact core internet systems.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen attacks of this nature targeting DNS servers, but the recent success of server admins to prevent normal internet users from being impacted is being hailed as a significant success.

In describing the attack, Graham Cluley, senior consultant at security firm Sophos, said it was like “fourteen fat men trying to get into an elevator - nothing can move”. We can only presume he was trying to illustrate a DDoS by analogy, rather than the actions of US server admins.