Powerful attack cripples majority of key Internet computers

briefly crippled nine of the 13 computer servers that manage global traffic

[Hunter]

One official described the attack Monday as the most sophisticated and large-scale assault against these crucial computers in the history of the Internet.

AP [story.news.yahoo.com]

[dingman]

The article doesn't make a single mention of the term 'name server' or 'DNS'. How is anyone supposed to understand why these 13 computers even matter without the briefest of explanations of what they do. If I didn't know better, I'd conclude from the article that the 'root servers' were some sort of monster router, rather than the central hub of the domain name system.

Anyone know of an article with any technical info about the attack? Like whether any of the various recent worms (the Slapper family come to mind) were used in creating the dDOS network? Or for that matter whether I'm right in assuming it was a dDOS attack at all? That'd have to be one hell of a lot of aggregate bandwidth to put stress on the root servers!

[martin]

Internet.com has a slightly more detail article:
[boston.internet.com...]

It says it was a distributed ICMP DoS. The article also has a few interesting links.

[Brett_Tabke]

Looks like there is another active thread on the subject:

[webmasterworld.com...]