Government Agencies Targeted in Cyberattack
Posted: Wed Jul 08, 2009 9:56 am
Most of us probably already know this, but just in case 
Washington Post
MSNBC
Computer World
Washington Post
MSNBC
Computer World
Honestly, that is not that big of a Botnet. I'm fairly shocked that they were not better prepared for this... then again, maybe I shouldn't be! Makes sense to hit the non-essential sites like DOT and such to test out the low power setting of something like this, then turn it up for the big ones. The attacks are apparently not very sophisticated, which leads me to believe: 1.) The agencies suck at security 2.) They have no idea what is really going to hit them.On Saturday and Sunday the attack was consuming 20 to 40 gigabytes of bandwidth per second, about 10 times the rate of a typical DDoS attack, one security expert said after being briefed by the US-CERT on Tuesday. "It's the biggest I've seen," said the expert, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. By Tuesday it was averaging about 1.2 gibabytes per second, he said.
Security experts estimate the size of the botnet at somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 computers...
A total of 26 Web sites were targeted, according to the researchers. In addition to sites run by government agencies, several commercial Web sites were also attacked, including those operated by Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange and The Washington Post.