We're entering protest season. The World Economic Forum opens today in New York City. Some protesters have launched what they call a cyber-protest using several different tools. So far it appears directed at a few selected, although well-known, corporations. http://www.geocities.com/net_strike_net/english_active.html On Wed, 30 Jan 2002, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
It's a classic DDoS attack, aimed at you. Someone has lots of zombie machines out there; at some point, they sent a command packet to all of them, saying "bombard such-and-such an IP address for 3600 seconds".
Common? It happens frequently to someone. Precursor? Entirely possible, though there's no way to know for sure. But it can be very bad -- see http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2103098,00.html for what happened to a British ISP.