FC: Another view of the Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, etc. DoS attacks

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

I've written a bunch of article on this, though without taking the more 
conspiratorial-angle:

A Frenzy of Hacking Attacks
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34234,00.html

Was Yahoo Smurfed or Trinooed?
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34203,00.html
(this article 
includes a reasonable amount of technical detail, and one network 
administrator says they could do a better job of coordination were it not 
for the Sherman antitrust act)

Routers Blamed for Yahoo Outage
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34178,00.htm

-Declan

**********

http://slashdot.org/articles/00/02/08/0344217.shtml
           Comment: 
02/08 23:26 by michael: So far, the best
           explanation I've seen for the massive network
           problems is here. Is it paranoid to note that we're
           being hit with unprecedented attacks, with no known
           motive, at the same time as the government is pushing
           for yet another expansion of their surveillance powers?
           People are focusing on how it's being done. Nobody
           seems to be asking who.


http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0002&L=foi-l&F=&S=&P=9484

Date:         Tue, 8 Feb 2000 14:43:27 -0800
From:         Jim Warren <jwarren () WELL COM>
Subject:      who's doing what, with which, to whom, for why?

Let's see ...

On January 27th, Clinton said he wants to make electronic "law enforcement"
a high priority, in his State of the Union speech.

By January 30th, the *always*-silent National Security Agency suddenly
*alleges* very publicly, that its main computers -- that process covert
communications interceptions from around the nation and world -- had
inexplicably crashed from January 24th to the 28th.

Escalating the issue, in the first week of February, Clinton's budget
proposes to spend $240-million to massively expand his undetectable,
at-a-keystroke, remote wiretapping facilities, to be able to secretly snoop
on any phone in the nation.
  And half of the $240-million is Defense Dept loot -- perhaps from secret
NSA appropriations (after all, wiretapping is what they *do*!).  Note that
another President thought that wiretapping his political opponents was so
important that he risked -- and lost -- his presidency, trying to install
them.

By February 7th, the world's most prominant online information service --
Yahoo (I don't count AOL as a service :-) -- suffers a massive attack and
crashes for hours.

By February 8th, Missouri and Oklahoma phone systems have crashed.  It
illustrates the horrors of vile cyber-terrorists, but without bothering
"important" people in Washington or on the East and West coasts.

Now, also on the 8th, the normally *very* reliable mail-server at
Concentric Networks -- a large national ISP -- has been refusing to respond
for more than an hour.

What better way to "prove" the need for massively expanded government
surveillance, and create a fenzy of support for it?!

Suddenly crackers seem to have become far better than any have ever been
before.  But then again -- what organization has the best computer and
phone-system crackers in the world?!  There is "No Such Agency."

--jim-the-paranoic

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