A denial-of-service attack yesterday, on key computers that help manage the Internet, went largely unnoticed by the world due to the resilience of the security measures and domain name systems, says a local expert.
The attack, believed to have originated from South Korea, lasted for hours and targeted root servers (computers that manage the Internet address suffixes such as .org) belonging to UltraDNS - a company that manages .org addresses.
Newswire Associated Press (AP) reports that at least three of the world`s 13 root servers were targeted. Apart from UltraDNS`s server, others operated by the US Department of Defence and the Internet`s primary oversight body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), were also attacked.
"Such denial-of-service attacks are not uncommon. In fact many of these 'attacks` are created by servers running old Microsoft platforms such as NT, Windows 2000 and Windows 98, as they continue to keep issuing junk queries," says Alan Levin, chairman of the South African Chapter of the Internet Society.
The AP report states this was the most significant attack against the Internet root services since 1 October 2002.
AP quotes ICANN`s chief technical officer John Crain as saying: "There was what appears to be some form of attack during the night hours here in California and into the morning." He says the attack continues, as does the hunt for its origin.
Levin says the Internet`s structure has become more robust over the past few years. This includes installing an "f root" server at the Johannesburg Internet Exchange (Jinx) premises in June 2004, he explains.
"Knowing that such attacks and other forms of disruption would plague the Internet in the future, it made sense for Africa to have its own server."
Levin says the Jinx server is an "any cast server", which means it does not have the same status as the established 13 servers that administer the Internet`s domain name service worldwide. However, it means African Internet traffic does not have to be routed through California, as was the case pre-2004.
UltraDNS, the company that administers the .org and .info suffixes, was originally founded by expatriate South African Rodney Joffe. In 2005, he sold his share to VeriSign, the US corporation that originally bought Mark Shuttleworth`s Thawte certification service.
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