The day the Internet nearly died, and no one noticed

That day happened to be Tuesday, which, hilariously, was also Safer Internet Day. Three of the Internet’s 13 root servers—the brain stem of the World Wide Web, controlling traffic and site identification—came under sustained attack from a massive network of zombie computers. Hackers essentially tried to overwhelm the system with massive amounts of data, targeting servers operated by the U.S. Department of Defense and ICANN, the Internet’s overseer. Analysts say the fact that the vast majority of Internet users barely noticed shows the resiliency of the Web. Meanwhile, computer scientists all over the globe were racing to overcome the threat and trying to track down its origins. It’s still unclear where most of the remotely controlled computers used in the attack were based, but initial evidence puts many of them in South Korea.

Bringing down a few root servers would be catastrophic for the web, the global economy, communications, you name it. What’s troubling about this attack was its size; it’s the biggest sustained attack on the Internet since 2002. But the fact that the servers kept humming in the face of tidal waves of data designed to bring them to their knees is also reassuring. Hackers will need to up the ante next time.

(Hat tip: Security Fix)