A massive and relatively new form of cyberattack aimed at a sole company is dragging parts of the global Internet down with it, interrupting services and causing traffic slowdowns particularly in Europe.
The attack -- which some experts are calling the biggest in history -- is aimed at Spamhaus, a anti-spam company based in Geneva and London that flags websites it considers bogus. Spamhaus sells its blacklists to Internet Service Providers, which often blocks the hosts flagged therein. According to experts, it's estimated to be responsible for blocking up to 80% of the global e-mail spam.
Spamhaus found itself at the business end of a colossal and specialized Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) onslaught soon after it recently added Cyberbunker, an online hosting service offering storage space to anything "except child porn and anything related to terrorism," to its blacklists, labeling it a spammer's haven -- a characterization Cyberbunker rejects. Cyberbunker has not directly claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Sven Olaf Kamphuis, claiming to be a spokesman for Cyberbunker told the BBC that Spamhaus shouldn't be able to determine "what goes and does not go on the Internet".
Spamhaus, which has contracted with security firm
The attack, then, has been clogging essential Internet infrastructure, which is why it's causing Internet services and users across the world to experience shutdowns or slowdowns. And while sole businesses can choose to temporarily shut down servers that are being used to carry out or being targeted by a DDoS attack, the DNS system cannot go offline without causing major disruptions to the worldwide flow of Internet traffic -- disruptions that would have significant consequences for the global economy.
Have you noticed your Internet speeds are slower in the past few days? Share your thoughts in the comments.