Cyber attacks of the kind that have recently hit numerous public websites are more of a nuisance than a real threat.  As first reported here, “a botnet comprised of about 50,000 infected computers has been waging a war against U.S. government Web sites and causing headaches for business in the U.S. and South Korea.”

What is a botnet?  It is a network of zombie computers, all infected with malicious code designed to attack a target.  In this case, the target was high profile government websites that include the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Department of Treasury, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of State, the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq, the Washington Post, the White House, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Transportation Department, as well as websites in South Korea. 

The type of attack is categorized as a distributed denial of service (DDoS).  The intent of the attack is to overwhelm resources in such a way as to make them unavailable to users of the system.  In South Korea, the situation was even more widespread as reported here. 

“The so-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks hit 25 Internet sites, including 11 domestic ones, shutting them down for hours, KISA said.  Other government agencies attacked include the National Assembly and the Ministry of Defense, with the websites of major lenders Shinhan Bank and Korea Exchange Bank brought down by the attack as well… The cyber attacks also affected the country’s No. 1 portal Naver’s e-mail service and online auctioneer eBay’s South Korean site Auction.com, the agency said.”

If this was a nuisance and not a real threat, then what was or is the purpose?  This is a political statement most likely.  It is very difficult to track the source of these types of disruptions to any particular responsible party.  Is this cyber warfare?  No.  It reminds me of North Korea’s current efforts to frighten the world by blasting off missiles and posturing about.  Could the attacks have originated from North Korea?  Maybe… but again, hard to prove. 

The media is making a big deal out of this, but it’s the usual Internet chaos that occurs on a minute by minute basis.  The embarrassing bit about all this is that United States’ government web  sites were affected! We have technology that is available to prevent these kinds of disruptions and it’s somewhat of a disgrace that the appropriate technology has not yet been implemented.   And I leave you with that thought.