Skiddies DDoS 5 Root Servers; 2 Unresponsive

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On Tuesday morning, five of internet's root servers were attacked using a distributed denial of service act. The stream of packets successfully knocked two of them off line, thus causing them to drop 90% of queries. However, since there are a total of 13 strategically placed servers around the world, the internet as we know it was not effected at all.

A DDoS style attack hasn't been used on the root servers for some time now. In fact, it hasn't knocked any off line since 2002. The thing that surprises me is that it took 80Mbps to knock it off line. They were claiming that was 10x their normal traffic. In todays standards that would mean the average botnet could have taken down the whole internet with ease!

And if you're not aware:

Botnet - Large group of infected computers, under the control of one person. Given the command they can DDoS targets.

DDoS - Multiple computers sending data (packets) to a target with a goal of overwhelming the target (and denying it service).

Root servers - Responsible for translating www.domain.com to an IP address that computers recognize.

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