Last week's attacks on the Internet's backbone likely emanated from computers in the United States and South Korea, FBI Director Robert Mueller today said. "The investigation is ongoing," Mueller said at an Internet security conference in Falls Church, Va. He . . .
Last week's attacks on the Internet's backbone likely emanated from computers in the United States and South Korea, FBI Director Robert Mueller today said. "The investigation is ongoing," Mueller said at an Internet security conference in Falls Church, Va. He did not offer more details on the investigation, nor did he outline the evidence investigators have gathered so far.

Last Monday, a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack struck the 13 "root" servers that provide the primary road map for the Internet. A subsequent and possibly related attack targeted the "name" servers that house Internet domains like dot-com and dot-info.

East Asia is a major source of cyber crime and computer attacks, in part because of the relatively high number of broadband users in the region's countries. High-speed Internet service is essential to DDOS attacks, in which hackers use dozens -- and often hundreds -- of commandeered computers to overwhelm targeted networks with a flood of Internet traffic. South Korea boasts nearly as many broadband users (8 million) as the U.S. and has more broadband connections per capita than any other country.

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