"Smurf" attack hits Minnesota

[John Walker]

PLI's Year 2000 Law discussion group

Link: http://www.networx.on.ca/~jwalker

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PLI's Year 2000 Law discussion group is an open list created for lawyers
and other legal professionals with  an interest in the legal implications
of  the  Year 2000  problem,  This  list's  purpose is the  exchange  of
information, questions and ideas regarding legal aspects of the Year 2000
problem.

The discussion group is moderated by  Charles L. Kerr, a partner with the
law firm of Morrison & Foerster, LLP., in New York City. Mr. Kerr was the
Chairman  of PLI's  "Understanding, Preventing  and Litigating  Year 2000
Issues" seminar which took place in February 1998.


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"Smurf" attack hits Minnesota 

By Paul Festa Staff Writer, 
CNET NEWS.COM 

http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,20178,00.html

University of Minnesota computer networks suffered a "denial of
service" attack today that caused data loss and slow connections
throughout the entire state.

The attack came at 11 a.m. CT and lasted more than an hour, according
to the university, though some targets reported feeling the affects
earlier and for a longer duration.

Aimed at the university, the attack set off a chain reaction
throughout the state, shutting down some computers entirely and in
other cases causing data loss and network slowdowns.

It "created a cyber-traffic jam," UMN security incident response
coordinator Susan Lezy-Haskell said in a statement. "Users had
difficulty accessing their servers and/or felt slowness in the
system. A small number of people were totally shut down. It was
necessary to down the connection to the University of Minnesota's
Crookston campus, which was the target of the attack."

David Bergum, senior network engineer at MRNet, which claims to be
the state's largest Internet service organization, said his network
was severely affected.

"We had about 2-1/2 hours of severely degraded service, with 30
percent or more packet loss to certain places," he said. "Ten percent
packet loss is noticeable, and 30 percent is pretty terrible."

According to Bergum and a statement released by the university, the
attack was of the kind known as a "smurf denial of service" attack.
The subject of a January advisory by the Computer Emergency Response
Team (CERT), the attack floods the targeted network with replies to
bogus "ping" packets.

Ping packets are sent to elicit response from networked computers. In
a "smurf" attack, the attacker specifies the targeted computer as the
ping packet's return address and sends out enough requests to
guarantee a deluge of responses.

The attack affected MRNet because the ISP has a cooperative agreement
with the university to share bandwidth provided by MCI Communications
and Sprint, according to Bergum.

Because MRNet was affected, so too were the Fortune 500 companies,
small businesses, and nearly all of the state's private colleges that
are MRNet customers.

"We had to take our site down," said Gary Shade, president of Web
design and hosting firm and MRNet client Shade's Landing. Shade said
his company had felt effects of the attack as early as 10 a.m. and
continued to suffer system overload well into the afternoon.

Today's attack is the second in the last two weeks for the University
of Minnesota. The university was also a target in the denial of
service attack that hit NASA, the Navy, and university campuses
nationwide earlier this month.

As part of its January advisory, CERT posted recommendations on
preventing smurf attacks.

Links:

University of Minnesota URL: http://www.umn.edu/

University of Minnesota, Crookston Main Home Page URL:
http://www.crk.umn.edu/

MRNet Home Page URL: http://www.mr.net/

CERT* Advisory CA-98.01 "smurf" IP Denial-of-Service Attacks URL:
http://www.cert.org/pub/advisories/CA-98.01.smurf.html

CERT Coordination Center URL: http://www.cert.org/

WWW.MCI.NET Home Page URL: http://www.mci.net/

SprintLink Home Page URL: http://www.sprint.net/

Web Site Design Shade's Landing Inc. Minnesota The Best in Web Site
Design, Hosting and Promotion URL: http://www.shadeslanding.com/

Hackers attack NASA, Navy URL:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,19674,00.html

--------------

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- "Smurf" attack hits Minnesota 
    University of Minnesota computer networks suffered a "denial of
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