BEIJING, Feb. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- An Internet attack by
hackers Tuesday overwhelmed three of the 13 computers that help manage global
traffic, but the unusually powerful attacks were countered so quickly they went
largely unnoticed by users.
Computer scientists worldwide raced to cope with
enormous volumes of data that threatened to saturate some of the Internet's most
vital pipelines.
Experts said the hackers appeared to disguise their
origin, but vast amounts of rogue data in the attacks were traced to South
Korea.
The attacks appeared to target UltraDNS, the company
that operates servers managing traffic for websites ending in "org" and some
other suffixes, experts said. Company officials did not immediately return
telephone calls from The Associated Press.
Among the targeted "root" servers that manage global
Internet traffic were ones operated by the Defense Department and the Internet's
primary oversight body.
"There was what appears to be some form of attack
during the night hours here in California and into the morning," said John
Crain, chief technical officer for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers. He said the attack was continuing and so was the hunt for its
origin.
"I don't think anybody has the full picture," Crain
said. "We're looking at the data."
Crain said Tuesday's attack was less serious than
attacks against the same 13 "root" servers in October 2002 because technology
innovations in recent years have increasingly distributed their workloads to
other computers around the globe.
(Agencies)
