From: William Knowles (wkC4I.ORG)
Date: Wed Apr 26 2000 - 17:01:33 CDT

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http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2555422,00.html

By Robert Lemos, ZDNN
April 25, 2000 4:38 PM PT

Top-five Internet service provider AboveNet Communications suffered a
denial-of-service attack on Tuesday -- raising the specter of another
round of Web attacks.

Paul Vixie, senior vice president of Internet services for Metromedia
Fiber Network Inc., AboveNet's parent company, said the attack did not
resemble February's spate of DoS attacks.

"This was not just a SMURF attack or some other broadcast storm aiming
meaningless data at our routers," Vixie said. "It was a direct attack
on our infrastructure."

The attack stopped Internet traffic to AboveNet's customers for
several hours starting late Tuesday morning.

The White Plains, N.Y., company is working with the FBI to investigate
the attack and declined to give more-specific details. Vixie did say
that tracking the attacker should not be as difficult as February's
DoS attacks had been. "Technically, there is cause for hope, where in
the (denial of service) case their was no cause for hope," he said.

Last week, a 15-year-old Canadian boy who called himself "Mafiaboy"
online was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and charged
in connection with the denial-of-service attack on CNN's online site
in February.

The teen, whose name was not released due to his age, was arrested
April 15 and formally charged two days later with two counts of
mischief to data after police searched his home. No suspects have been
named in the attacks on at least seven other sites, however.

AboveNet attack more skilled This attacker seemed a bit more skilled
than the cybervandals who flooded eight major Web sites in February,
Vixie said. "I would bet that this was someone with a little more
experience than the last batch."

AboveNet provides Internet service of and hosts the Web sites of
nearly 1,000 companies, with offices in the United Kingdom, Germany,
the Netherlands and Japan.

Vixie said Tuesday's attack could not succeed again. "We plugged the
hole that has allowed it to happen," he said.

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