The most significant attack on the Domain Name infrastructure since 2002 took place last night.
The infrastructure stands at the middle of the DNS structure that translates domain names into their numeric IP addresses. Effectively acting as an address book.
It appears that two servers were the target of the attack. One of them was operated by the US defence department and the other by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, who look after the domain name structure.
It is understood that the attacks, which started last night and ran for 12 hours, were mounted from Asia.
“It was a significant and concerted attack, but the average Internet user would have barely noticed,” said Paul Levins, the vice-president of corporate affairs at ICANN, reports the Guardian.
These days the DNS structure is pretty robust.
Using language that only a quasi-military force can, the US homeland security department confirmed it was monitoring what it called “anomalous” Internet traffic.