Mysterious Hackers Are Trying to Take Down the Entire Internet

[reef]

There are just 13 servers around the world that act as a core directory for the rest of the internet, and someone—or a group of someones—recently tried to knock them out of commission. If they succeed, this would be the end of the internet as we know it.

Let me explain. If you type the easy-to-remember "maxim.com" into your browser, this cluster of servers makes sure that this simple name points to a more complicated Internet Protocol (IP) address. Collectively these root servers form what Ars Technica calls "one of the most vital organs of the internet anatomy."

At the end of November, those organs were under attack. A dryly-worded report at root-servers.org stated that the servers began taking a "high rate" of queries for one domain name on November 30th. The attack lasted over two hours, started again on December 1st, lasting for about an hour. "The observed traffic volume due to this event," reads the report, "was up to approximately 5 million queries per second."

This is evidence of a DDoS attack, a technique generally used by hackers to disable a system by overwhelming it with traffic.  Remarkably, while the servers that form the core of the internet were perhaps shaken enough to slow down a bit, there were "no known reports of end-user visible error conditions during, and as a result of, this incident."

So no harm, no foul, right? The internet's spine took a couple of blasts from an unusually large DDoS attack and kept on ticking. Turns out, reports Ars Technica, this was a big, big deal:....

Full Article      http://www.maxim.com/tech/article/mysterious-hackers-internet-2015-12

[GhostShip]

Thankfully the bulk of the internets traffic does not need to access the root dns servers much, caching of this data occurs for billions of domains so the effect might not even be noticed unless you looked for some pretty obscure domains that required a look-up afresh.

[TOAD]

It's not KM is it? 

[GhostShip]

It may well be 

He doesnt like to do things by half measures thats for sure, when I last spoke to him he had joined some "anonymous" style group, obviously not one that promotes free speech as he has done his best to censor and silence those using the WPN.

[White Stripes]

the 13 core servers have been hit before.... they always adapt quickly and survive

[wonderer]

duh
how many servers do we need for wpn to survive
KM will need quite a lot more effort to bring down internet
it may be but then will stay on his wishlist