Jan. 9 — A Romanian hacker has launched a major distributed denial of service (DDoS) forcing one of the largest IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks, Undernet, to shut down much of its service, system administrators said.
IRC IS ONE OF THE Internet’s largest and best-established chat systems, predating such technologies as AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ. It has millions of users.
A number of Internet Service Providers hosting Undernet servers — including some in the US, the Netherlands and France — have been hit with DDoS attacks.
One IRC server system administrator who spoke on the condition of anonymity, so that his servers would not become a target, said that the attacks appear to be coming from hundreds of remote machines taken over by a single hacker based in Romania. He also suggests that Romania lacks the legal infrastructure to deal with the attacks.
“This is a big problem since the Romanian hackers community is very active,” he says. “We don’t want to close IRC, but there is truly a lack of interest from the authorities about it, which is not the case for the streets, where they are pretty active.”
Undernet issued a statement on its Web site Sunday suggesting that the situation threatens the existence of its IRC service. “To put it simply, we cannot provide you with a free and stable IRC service if that means the companies providing that service must continually suffer the loss of customers and revenue, the cost is simply too great. This ongoing problem threatens the existence of IRC as one of the ‘classic’ Internet services,” reads the statement.
Want to learn more?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/513699.asp
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-Administrator / Owner
"Everything was true. God was an astronaut. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed
IRC IS ONE OF THE Internet’s largest and best-established chat systems, predating such technologies as AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ. It has millions of users.
A number of Internet Service Providers hosting Undernet servers — including some in the US, the Netherlands and France — have been hit with DDoS attacks.
One IRC server system administrator who spoke on the condition of anonymity, so that his servers would not become a target, said that the attacks appear to be coming from hundreds of remote machines taken over by a single hacker based in Romania. He also suggests that Romania lacks the legal infrastructure to deal with the attacks.
“This is a big problem since the Romanian hackers community is very active,” he says. “We don’t want to close IRC, but there is truly a lack of interest from the authorities about it, which is not the case for the streets, where they are pretty active.”
Undernet issued a statement on its Web site Sunday suggesting that the situation threatens the existence of its IRC service. “To put it simply, we cannot provide you with a free and stable IRC service if that means the companies providing that service must continually suffer the loss of customers and revenue, the cost is simply too great. This ongoing problem threatens the existence of IRC as one of the ‘classic’ Internet services,” reads the statement.
Want to learn more?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/513699.asp
------------------
-Administrator / Owner
"Everything was true. God was an astronaut. Oz really is over the
rainbow. ...and Midian is where the monsters live." -Nightbreed