Federal Web sites knocked out by cyber attack

[Turborama]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON – A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime, The Associated Press has learned.

The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening. Cyber attacks on South Korea government and private sites also may be linked, officials there said.

U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack. But Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks."

The U.S., she said, sees attacks on its networks every day, and measures have been put in place to minimize the impact on federal Web sites.

It was not clear whether other federal government sites also were attacked.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090708/ap_on_go_ot/us_cyber_attack

[notesdev]

1. Meanwhile

if you are not the federal government and you have a server in the USA, any hacker in the world can do whatever they damn please to you and the feds won't lift a damn finger.

I wrote a letter to a half-dozen Senators years ago pointing out that the constant attacks from around the world were a national security issue.

Naturally, the idea that something should be done proactively went over like a sausage in a synagogue.

[RainDog]

2. was this about the time that Goldman Sachs was hacked too?

I don't know enough about either situation but could they have been related? didn't they i.d. the guy who hacked g.s.?

[dmr]

4. No, that was an inside job by an ex employee n/t

[Poll_Blind]

3. And somewhere on (whatever)Underground.com they're doing Twitter DDOS attacks, too.

And so it goes? Maybe it never was there to begin with.

PB