Posted on 10/07/2004 9:45:49 PM PDT by endthematrix
A cyber attack that affected thousands of machines in Australia was launched from a Singapore computer, news reports said today.
A Pacific Internet customer's server has been identified as the one turned into a rogue computer last month, hitting an Australian university computer network and affecting 10,000 machines, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) told The Straits Times.
The regulator could not identify the attacker or his location and knew no motive for the attacks. It is believed the attacker probably gained control of the server without the knowledge of its owner or Pacific Internet, on whose network the server was hosted.
A server is a host computer, which other machines can gain access to to download information.
The attack came to light in Norway when a security analyst for an internet security provider, Telenor, noticed one computer there had been infected with illegal communications software, which could allow the machine to be controlled by someone else, the report said.
Telenor analyst Vidar Wilkens traced the infection to its source and notified Pacific Internet.
The Australian university also traced the infection to the Pacific Internet network after discovering its network had been attacked.
The Singapore Computer Emergency Response Team contacted Pacific Internet and advised it to tell its customer to shut down the affected machine.
The Australian network was hit by a "botnet attack", in which a large number of computers can be controlled and the owners do not know their machines have been infected.
ping
Singapore is the place where they "cane" (as in beat with) criminals... right? If they catch the perps they probably won't be sitting before a computer again (or anywhere else) any time soon
Very true. IIRC hacks into the US was traced back several tiers...to Russia.
IIRC yes. Dept of Defense.
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