Clearly, an attack that brings down Yahoo! is a big story. But to then have the same type of attack ravage Buy.com, Amazon.com, ZDNet, eBay, E*Trade, Datek, and MSN.com? What the heck is going on?
Apparently, a "distributed denial of service" attack, or DDoS attack, was responsible for slowing down the aforementioned Web sites to an unusable crawl. In a DDoS attack, a host searches for machines to use as broadcasters to send junk packets at a Web server. Once enough broadcasters are amassed, they all simultaneously send bad authentication requests at the Web server. The requests fill up the Web server, which may wait as much as a minute on each request. Eventually, the Web server is brought to its knees because it has so many requests to fill, and not enough capacity to handle them all at one time.
The good news is that this type of attack doesn't involve actually breaking into the Web sites' computers. The bad news is that the attack is relatively easy to do, powerful, and is extremely hard to investigate. Because of the sophisticated software attackers utilize, it will be tough for investigators to trace where the attack originated and who did it.
What does this attack mean for the Internet? Don't worry, it's not the end of the Web as we know it. But the attacks will likely continue until more sites decide to protect themselves from this type of attack. Overall, though, the Web will survive. Denial of service attacks have been around for a long time, and eventually solutions will emerge to fix the problem.
For more information on DDoS, try AntiOnline's article on the subject.
AOL previews AOL TV and Netscape 6.0
AOL TV will be similar to Microsoft's WebTV--Internet access through a TV, powered by a set-top box. And I really don't see how it will do any better than WebTV. There just isn't much logic in paying $300 for a set-top box when you can get a computer that costs just as much and does ten times as many things. Not only that, but it costs $5 to $10 more to get Internet access through these things! For what, a program guide that works with your VCR?
Don't get me wrong; there is a market for these set-top boxes for those that are afraid of using a computer. But how big is that market? Pretty darn small, because anyone near working age--or younger--is learning that a computer is essential to their work and study.
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