Attacks on the nation’s computer infrastructures have become an increasingly serious problem. While government agencies have been common targets, the distributed denial-of-service attacks that materialized last year primarily targeted commercial sites.

"Hackers attacked some of America’s most popular Web sites yesterday for the third day in a row, walling off frustrated consumers from companies that provide news and stock trading as law enforcement officials launched a nationwide criminal investigation... The computer attacks earlier this week temporarily blocked access to Web sites that read like a Who’s Who of the new economy, including Yahoo, eBay, Amazon, CNN.com and Buy.com," reported the Washington Post on Feb. 10, 2000.

This story reflects the serious and sophisticated nature of today’s cyber-attacks. During the past 12 years, the growth of incidents reported to CERT has roughly paralleled the growth of the Internet.

[ Read more ]

Related items

• News: Use Snort for Lightweight Intrusion Detection (10 July 2002)
• News: Intrusion detection: running a hacker simulation (31 May 2002)
• News: Beyond intrusion detection (29 May 2002)
• News: IDS Evasion Techniques and Tactics (7 May 2002)
• Article: Structural versus Operational Intrusion Detection (8 April 2002)
• Article: Interpreting Network Traffic: A Network Intrusion Detector's Look At Suspicious Events (4 April 2002)
• Article: Network Intrusion Detection of Third Party Effects (4 April 2002)
• Article: Information Warfare: When Intrusion Detection Isn't Enough (1 April 2002)
• Article: Traditional Intrusion Detection Model Outdated and Distracting (1 April 2002)