DNS Root Servers Attacked 311
liquidat and others wrote in with the news that the DNS Root Servers were attacked overnight. It looks like the F, I, and M servers felt the attack and recovered, whereas G (US Department of Defense) and L (ICANN) did less well. Some new botnet flexing its muscle perhaps? AP coverage is here.
And...??? (Score:4, Insightful)
and? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I am complaining, one less bot net to worry about.
Good thing that they apparently never heard of routers though.
Re:so a lot of it was from South Korea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:so a lot of it was from South Korea.... (Score:3, Insightful)
All that means is the Botnet was mostly infected computers from South Korea, given the penetration of broadband in that nation its not that surprising. And if it leads to the rest of the intrnet cutting off South Korea, that benefits the North.
Stupid little freaks.
You would think Slashdotters would at least understand this basic fact. *sigh*
Re:so a lot of it was from South Korea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:and? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a dumb, brute-force type of approach. A much, MUCH more effective way would be to simply find an appropriate flaw in IOS to exploit...
steve
Re:Spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why am I not surprised that Defense did poorly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:so a lot of it was from South Korea.... (Score:3, Insightful)
And we all know how secure that is.
Re:so a lot of it was from South Korea.... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's a pretty bold accusation (Score:5, Insightful)
But congratulations on getting everyone riled up.
More root servers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ban all Microsoft Users from the Internet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so a lot of it was from South Korea.... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Almost a 100% windows monoculture (really), because they standardised on an ActiveX control for secure banking etc before SSL was standardised, and everything still needs it
- Dirt cheap, fast broadband
- Fairly rampant piracy, hence many unpatched machines
Put it together and you get botnet paradise.Re:Ban all Microsoft Users from the Internet... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is an easy target, given the insanely large user-base. However, if those users suddenly switched to Linux, it's doubtful that their practices would stop - they'd still install whichever distribution looked the best, installed 134 unneeded services and enabled them all by default, open unsafe attachments, and never update their computer.
In every operating system I've seen yet, security is an inconvenience. While you and I think that the tradeoff is worth it, we will always be outnumbered by people who think that it isn't. People who log in as "Administrator" would just as quickly read their email and browse porn sites as "root". Sad, but true.
Re:130+ root servers (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, you have that entirely backwards. The last few thousand years have tought us that institutions generally suck at fulfilling the needs of the people. Monarchies, Feudalism, the Inquisition-era Catholic church, and Soviet Russia were all the biggest, most far-reaching institutions of their day.
Thomas Jefferson and his cronies decided there was a better way. I agree with him, so I'll take a handful of determined, skilled, like-minded individuals over an "institution" a any day. I can guarantee you if all the root servers were in the control of an "institution", that institution would still be doing feasibility studies on anycast routing and crying for more money from the UN as they only way to prevent DDoS attacks.
Re:Ban all Microsoft Users from the Internet... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of Vista's features is the way that even if you log in with admin privileges, you don't actually have them until you jump through an extra hoop, and even then I think you only have them only as long as necessary. I'm sure that if it has been implemented correctly, it will certainly shorten the amount of self-hanging rope available to the average user.
I'm also sure that there are lots of people working on a hack to disable this right now. (I've not used Vista so I may be misinformed - there may be a way to disable it easily anyway?)
And even without that, enough people are gullible enough that if a web site says that to use the available features correctly you need to "follow these simple instructions", it will be done.
Re:130+ root servers (Score:5, Insightful)
>We really need to move to a more formalized structure that reinforces the long-term continuation of the good system we have today.
And who's going to run that formalized structure? Hrm, maybe some "good individuals and organizations" would be willing to do it?
Re:Visual Studio requires admin rights to run (OT) (Score:2, Insightful)
Sounds like an interesting bit of code to write if you ask me...
"Many of them" IS the redundancy. (Score:3, Insightful)
Having multiple root servers IS the redundancy - originally, and to some extent even now. Big-time redundancy within each one is just (really strong) suspenders to supplement the belt.
A non-redundant root server is still useful - even if perhaps not always up and/or not capable of drinking as large a firehose of requests as some giant, geographically-diverse, multiple-cluster. All it takes is one response from one server to get your nameserver's search started.
Re:Ban all Microsoft Users from the Internet... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ban all Microsoft Users from the Internet... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vandals and criminals (Score:1, Insightful)