[fwd] Cracker Attack Paralyzes Panix

Fri Sep 13 16:53:53 UTC 1996

"This is the first major attack of a kind that I believe to be the final
 Internet security problem," says a Lucent Technologies Internet 
 security expert, who says he "has been waiting" for just such an event.

This and similair "ping" floods are somewhat common. We have seen 2
incidents in the past 6 months. Both times hackers used our system to
initial ping floods against other ISP's, effectivly shutting down thier T1
connections. We did not see the floods since our 10Mb connection absorbed
the attack as normal traffic stats. Alex Rosen was quoted in the
Washington Post that this was not the publicity he wanted to have, but
believed such incidents needed to be exposed. 

/stb

---
Stephen Balbach  "Driving the Internet To Work"
VP, ClarkNet     due to the high volume of mail I receive please quote
info at clark.net   the full original message in your reply.

On Thu, 12 Sep 1996, Paul Ferguson wrote:

> FYI: Edupage excerpt of a WSJ article.
> 
> - paul
> 
> >Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 17:18:14 -0400 (EDT)
> >From: Edupage Editors <educom at elanor.oit.unc.edu>
> >To: "EDUCOM Edupage Mailing List" <edupage at elanor.oit.unc.edu>
> >Subject: Edupage, 12 September 1996
> 
> >
> >CRACKER ATTACK PARALYZES PANIX
> >Repeated attacks by a computer cracker have virtually shut down New York's
> >Public Access Networks Corp., better known as Panix.  The attacks have
> >overwhelmed the computers' capacity to respond to requests for an
> >"electronic handshake" by sending as many as 150 bogus requests a second.
> >"This is the first major attack of a kind that I believe to be the final
> >Internet security problem," says a Lucent Technologies Internet security
> >expert, who says he "has been waiting" for just such an event.  Internet
> >computers have no quick way of distinguishing these bogus requests from real
> >ones, and even when security software is upgraded to ease the problem, the
> >crackers could respond with even more intense assaults.  "There's going to
> >be the usual arms race," predicts the Lucent security expert, between
> >improved security measures and crackers' ability to disable them.  (Wall
> >Street Journal 12 Sep B1)
> >
> 