By ADAM GIFFORD
Internet hackers have tried to shut down one of New Zealand's most popular Internet companies, Ihug.
The "denial of service" attack came in the same week that hackers shut down some of the world's most popular Websites, including the Yahoo search engine site, the CNN news site and Amazon.com, the online bookstore.
FBI agents are hunting down the cyber-hackers who shut down the big American Websites by fooling other computers into send millions of electronic messages to them.
One of the host computers used to attack Ihug appeared to have been in Timaru. The machines are known as "zombies," since the owners do not know what their system is being used for.
An independent computer security expert believes the Ihug attack originated in this country.
Such a hack floods a Website with so many requests that it cannot cope with the demand.
The Yahoo site was reportedly hit with the equivalent of 104 million people dialing one company's telephone lines at once.
Ihug customers reported international Internet access was non-existent last Thursday night and traffic capacity dropped to 10 per cent of normal.
Arjon de Landgraaf, of Auckland ebusiness and Internet security company Co-Logic said such attacks raised the possibility of electronic blackmail, with hackers having the capability to shut a company's business down.
He disagreed with suggestions the Ihug attack had come from overseas.
"I would say anything like this is a New Zealand attack. There are about 20 really good hackers in New Zealand."
Some could have been out to take revenge against Ihug, but many hackers were into status and the ability to show they were capable of paralysing big companies.
"The cost to any organisation is enormous," he said. Companies such as Ihug would have immediate costs of trying to get its system working again, as well as the effect on its reputation.
They can create unwanted publicity and exposure, and uncertainty among customers about the safety of their data.
Ihug director Tim Wood said such attacks had "a sporadic effect, not a major one" on the company.
The scale of last week's attack was tiny, compared with that on sites such as Yahoo and CNN.
The basic structure of the Internet allowed the free flow of information, but also provided hackers ways of making themselves a nuisance.
Engineering manager John Russell said there were several attacks through the week sourced from computers in the United States, with the worst one on a Timaru link lasting 50 minutes and halving traffic levels for other dial-in customers.
"They are exactly the same as the denial of service attacks in the States.
We get a flood of information through our systems and routers from thousands of separate points across the net," Mr Russell said.
"Our routers are not rigged to deal with that level of activity so they get overloaded and end up denying service."
"Floodnet" is the hacker program most commonly used for such attacks, and doesn't require great technical skill to operate.
It works by installing a hidden program or "daemon" on a host server, perhaps months in advance, which can then be activated simultaneously with hundreds or thousands of other computers to launch an attack.
Mr de Landgraaf said hackers used automatic programs to look for systems with vulnerabilities in firewalls and operating systems.
"When the program finds one it can open it checks the pipeline - it's looking for systems which are constantly open to the Internet," Mr de Landgraaf said.
"Even when your systems are not the direct target, they could well be used as a 'zombie' for an attack, without you knowing it.
"It not only dramatically slows down your systems, it also makes you in a way responsible for the break-down of the other system, as your security is not tight enough to prevent it from being hijacked."
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