It started with Yahoo on Feb. 7. It continued when eBay, Amazon.com, CNN.com and Buy.com were hit Feb. 8. With two online stock brokerages (E*Trade and Datek) and the high-tech online news service and portal ZDNet hit Feb. 9, the FBI is yelling halt - the bureau has stepped up an investigation into the attacks.
Security experts tell APBNews they fear the siege -- which prevents computer users from viewing the sites but does not violate the integrity of the systems themselves -- will continue as the computer vandals pick out new targets; at least, until the vandals are identified.
ZDNet was hit by a denial-of-service attack at 7:30 a.m. PST Feb. 9, taking the site offline for two hours while technicians tried to block the e-bombing which overwhelmed its servers, according to MSNBC.
Spokeswoman Martha Papiano tells MSNBC ZDNet's blackout ended two and a half hours later, but she wasn't sure whether that was due to its techicians or the attackers ending the bombing.
Another ZDNet spokesman, Robert Borchert, tells APBNews he thinks the attack was triggered by ZDNet's earnings report issued late Tuesday. "Given this rash of attacks on these high-profile Web sites, it's not surprising that we were hit," he says. "We are the 16th-largest Web site and the leading site that focuses on technology, and we had a great announcement on financial results last night."
E*Trade representatives tell APBNews they were hit hard enough that 20 percent of their customers could not get into the Web site during the bombing, while Datek says its traffic was cut ten percent. However, Datek spokesman Michael Dunn says they cannot confirm at this writing whether their traffic block was caused directly by the DOS bombing.
Datek's block happened at their host company's network routers - the same host company, which he wouldn't name, that hosts other online brokers like Waterhouse, which tells APBNews they had no disturbances…yet.
Observers are calling it guerilla warfare with no assured ending right away. "Somebody is attempting to demonstrate the weakness and fragility of the Internet and e-commerce," Russ Cooper, who maintains the popular security mailing list NTBugTraq, tells APBNews. "Why they're doing that, we don't know."
The unknown DOS-bombers flew new cybersorties Feb. 8 when they knocked down Amazon.com, eBay, Buy.com and CNN.com. CNN.com was nailed from 7-8:45 p.m., but before very long extra security kept further attacks from doing harm and the site was back to normal.
eBay restored full service by midnight, offering credit to any customer whose auction was affected by the DOS-bombing. But DOS-bombing hit Buy.com where it hurt - their attack hit within an hour of their initial public offering of stock, APBNews says.
Both eBay and Buy.com tell CNBC they were hit by a coordinated attack against their service provider, Exodus Communications - which hosts several name Net sites.
The DOS-bombings began Feb. 7 when Yahoo, one of the Internet's largest portals, was hit for three hours in the afternoon.
It still isn't known who is responsible for the bombings, but an Exodus customer tells MSNBC he received a page from the company at around 12:30 PST showing this message: "Denial of service attack against Irvine IDC. Filters applied at Exodus borders. Network is returning to normal."
CNBC says Exodus was hit from three U.S. locations, Chicago, Boston and New York, with some 800 megabits of traffic per second - eight times Exodus's maximum capacity, CNBC says.
