Cyber Attackers Attempt To Bring Down Global Internet 20 Years Ago Today

Each day, Benzinga takes a look back at a notable market-related moment that occurred on this date.

What Happened? On this day in 2002, cyber attackers attempted unsuccessfully to disrupt global internet services.

Where The Market Was: The Dow finished the day at 8,538.24. The S&P 500 finished at 899.72.

What Else Was Going On In The World? In 2002, US Airways, the seventh largest U.S. airline, filed for bankruptcy. Salt Lake City hosted the XIX Winter Olympics. A gallon of gasoline cost $1.61.

Massive Internet Attack: On Oct. 21, 2002, cyber attackers attempted to bring down the internet by launching attacks against its central address books via a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDos). The attack temporarily disabled seven of the internet’s 13 root servers, but was mostly unsuccessful in disrupting internet service around the world thanks to the design of the internet itself.

The attack, which lasted about one hour, targeted all 13 DNS root name servers. Using a botnet, attackers sent large numbers of ICMP ping packets to each server. Packet filters helped protect the servers from incoming ICMP ping packets, limiting the impact of the attack and minimizing the impact on the average internet user.

Data on the 13 key servers is replicated tens of thousands of times around the world by internet service providers and other computers. Only a small fraction of total internet requests at the time even made it to the 13 main systems. This system of caching and replication means it would likely take a sustained outage of all major root servers for at least several days before most internet users noticed a major problem.

Photo: Soumil Kumar from Pexels.