WASHINGTON - The government was monitoring a series of electronic attacks launched early Tuesday against U.S. Internet providers, hours after European authorities passed warnings to the FBI predicting the attacks. The impact from the attacks appeared limited, and there were no reports of outages or even delayed e-mails. A flood of data, spiking nearly 700 percent more than usual traffic, was aimed at Internet providers and Web sites on the East coast starting about 2 a.m. EDT, then shifted toward providers and sites in Seattle, said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. But unlike some recent so-called "denial of service" attacks, which employed hundreds or thousands of computers to overwhelm Web sites, this latest attack appeared to be coming from a relatively small number of machines, the official said. That has allowed Internet providers to protect their networks more easily by filtering data from the attacking computers. The FBI issued a dramatic warning hours before the attacks started, based on information from Italian authorities, the U.S. official said. The alert cited "credible but nonspecific information that wide-scale hacker attacks" were planned against U.S. Web sites and Internet providers, "possibly emanating from Western Europe." The earliest attacks targeted East Coast companies, including some in Virginia and Maryland, then shifted to target sites in Seattle, the official said. The White House and FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center were monitoring the attacks. Some experts indicated the attacks were so easily foiled that they did not register any impact on the health of the Internet. "We haven't seen anything out of the ordinary," said Chris Rouland of Atlanta-based Internet Security Systems Inc., which sells protective software to thousands of companies. "We're paying attention to any sites that may go down."
On the afternoon of August 05, 2002, the National Infrastructure Protection Center received credible, but nonspecific information that wide-scale hacker attacks against U.S. websites and Internet Service Providers (ISP) are being planned for later tonight, possibly emanating from Western Europe. The purpose of this alert is to recommend that website and ISP administrators heighten their awareness of network traffic during this period and encourage them to report suspected malicious activities to their local FBI office http://www.fbi.gov/contact/fo/fo.htm or the NIPC and to other appropriate authorities. Recipients may report incidents online at http://www.nipc.gov/incident/cirr.htm, and can reach the NIPC Watch and Warning Unit at (202) 323-3205, (888) 585-9078, or nipc.watch@fbi.gov. The NIPC intends to update this alert should it receive additional relevant information, including information provided to it by the user community.
