By MICHAEL FOREMAN
Thousands of internet users were disrupted yesterday after hackers forced Telecom to sever its internet link with the outside world.
It is understood that Telecom cut the link to its United States-based internet supplier, AboveNet, about 12.30 pm.
Full services had been restored by 3 pm.
During that time 310,000
users of Telecom's Xtra service, as well as customers of several other internet providers (ISPs), were unable to access overseas web pages.
The denial-of-service attack - which bombards internet servers with spurious requests for information - was similar to those that shut down popular United States websites such as Yahoo and Amazon.com this year.
The Telecom attack was apparently launched by American hackers.
Anand Lal, network administrator at internet provider ihug, said the attack had affected Xtra and a few small ISPs.
"We are not affected, but we monitor the internet through simple connectivity tests," he said.
"I'm not aware of the extent of their problems, but parts of Xtra are unreachable."
Xtra marketing manager Chris Thompson described the attack as reasonably severe, but he refused to give details, claiming this information would help the hackers.
Most customers on the network would have been affected during the worst of the attacks, he said.
Some would not have noticed anything, but they may have experienced slight delays. Others would have lost connectivity.
But Shane Bates, chief executive officer of Auckland web security company SecureNet, said this was a major attack on Telecom.
Switching off the United States internet feed was a panic measure that had compromised customers who depended on the web, he said.
"This is the sort of thing Telecom should be able to handle in 30 seconds by switching to an alternative feed.
"It shows a complete lack of planning for what was a relatively straightforward occurrence."
