Cyber Attack Targets Government Websites

A botnet of about 50,000 infected computers has been attacking U.S. government websites and causing trouble for businesses in both the United States and South Korea.

The attack started this past Saturday it knocking out the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's website on Monday and Tuesday.  Other government agencies have also been targeted, including the U.S. Department of Transportation.

"The DOT has been experiencing network incidents since this past weekend. We are working with the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team [US-CERT] at this time," a spokesperson said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury confirmed that its website had also been hit with a denial-of-service attack.

Other targets have included U.S. Bancorp, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of State, the White House, the U.S. Department of Defense, the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ.

For now, the cyber attack is really more of a headache than an actual security threat.  We're talking about a plain old DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack that bombards sites with useless requests, which in turn makes them unavailable for legitimate users.

Security experts estimate the size of the botnet at somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 computers.

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• Cyber attack on US, S Korea (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Cyber Attacks Cripple Web Sites (nytimes.com)
• After US, cyber attacks hit South Korea (guardian.co.uk)
• Federal Web Sites Hit By Cyber Attack (abcnews.go.com)

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Technorati Tags: DDOS, Hacks, North Korea, Security, United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Department of the Treasury

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