The biggest cyberattack in Internet history

The biggest cyberattack in Internet history

Things on the web feel a little sluggish today? You aren't imagining things. Security experts claim that the largest cyberattack inInternet history is happening right now, slowing services like Netflix to a crawl and making other global websites completely unreachable. The traffic jam is all due to a very public spat between a Dutch webhosting company and a quiet spam-fighting organization. Here's what you need to know:

What's going on?
Spamhaus is a non-profit that — you guessed it — helps organizations fight spam and other unwanted stuff by providing them with content filters. The company keeps tabs of malicious servers on exhaustive blacklists. The trouble began when Spamhaus added a Dutch company calledCyberbunker to its blacklist, a service that offers hosting to any kind of website "except child porn and anything related to terrorism." A Cyberbunker spokesman said that Spamhaus was abusing its power, and should not be allowed to decide "what goes and does not go on the Internet."

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So who's attacking whom?
Spamhaus says Cyberbunker has been retaliating with a powerful denial of service, or DDoS, attack. The attacks, which Spamhaus claims started on March 19, are reaching "previously unknown magnitudes, growing to a data stream of 300 billion bits per second," says the New York Times. (For comparison, similar DDoS attacks that took down major banks peaked at 50 billion bits.) "It's a real number," says Patrick Gilmore, chief architect of Akamai Technologies, a digital content provider. "It is the largest publicly announced DDoS attack in the history of the Internet."

So Cyberbunker is attacking Spamhaus directly?
Not exactly. Cyberbunker doesn't appear to be responding to anyone's request for comment. Spamhaus, on the other hand, asserts that Cyberbunker is cooperating with "criminal gangs" from Eastern Europe and Russia to coordinate the DDoS attacks. These attacks are said to be organized by "swarms of computers called botnets," says the Times. The technique "uses a long-known flaw in the Internet's basic plumbing," akin to "using a machine gun to spray an entire crowd when the intent is to kill one person." In other words, it's causing a major data pile-up.

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Who are these attacks affecting?
Not to get too technical, but the reason these attacks are so crippling is because they are flooding Spamhaus' Domain Name System, or DNS, with massive amounts of its own data. Spamhaus hosts 80 servers around the world, and hackers are "targeting every part of the Internet infrastructure that they feel can be brought down," says Steve Linford, chief executive of Spamhaus. As such, millions of Internet users trying to access the web may be experiencing delays. Security experts are concerned that as the attacks get more powerful, basic Internet services like email and banking may be jeopardized.

Who first discovered it?
The attacks were first mentioned publicly by a Silicon Valley firm called CloudFare, which was hired by Spamhaus for security. However, in trying to defend against the DDoS attacks, it, too, ended up being attacked. "These things are essentially like nuclear bombs," said CloudFlare chief executive Matthew Prince. "It's so easy to cause so much damage." Now, other companies like Google are doing their part to keep the Internet held together, and are lending Spamhaus resources to "absorb all this traffic."

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A day after big landslide, examinations continue

Play video: Washington Landslide Threatens Dozens of Homes

Play video: Raw: Aerial View of Washington Landslide Damage

COUPEVILLE, Wash. (AP) — Authorities Thursday assessed the damage and danger from a massive landslide on a scenic Washington state island as nervous residents waited for more detailed information about how safe the area is.

One home was heavily damaged and 33 others were ordered evacuated after the landslide early Wednesday on Whidbey Island, about 50 miles north of Seattle. No one was injured.

On Thursday, "road closed" signs were being posted to prevent access to some areas as geologists continued to examine the site where 400 to 500 yards of a hillside plunged toward Puget Sound.

Pete Kenny was on a vacation to help move his grandmother to Illinois and heard the landslide as he watched power line transformers explode.

"The landslide started right at the property line and went south of us," he said Thursday.

Kenny said crews were going to go house-to-house, tagging structures with different colors, with red meaning mandatory evacuation. Details on exactly how many homes were still off limits were not available Thursday afternoon.

Kenny said his grandmother's home and neighbor to south have not been evacuated. That neighbor lost part of their yard.

"It's a real sad situation. I just hope everything works out," he said.

Many of the homes are summer cabins or weekend getaways and were unoccupied. Some are larger, upscale properties and others are more modest dwellings.

The slide area remains unstable.

A geotechnical engineer working for Island County and state Department of Natural Resources geologists took a preliminary look at the area Wednesday and hoped to complete a fuller assessment Thursday.

Terry Swanson, a geologist at the University of Washington and a Whidbey Island resident, said more detailed studies are needed.

"Not all bluffs act the same. We have landslides here every year," Swanson said of the island, which is about 35 miles long, north to south, and just a mile or two wide in places. "People understand that yes, these are clearly hazards, but there are different types of hazards for different types of slopes."

Residents of about 15 homes higher up the hillside were told by authorities Wednesday evening that they could return. Eleven people from 16 homes along a road close to the water were evacuated by boat because the road was blocked by the landslide. Swanson said access to those houses would remain a challenge.

"That part of the road is gone," he said.

A NEW AMERICAN REBELLION

LOS ANGELES -- As the Supreme Court debated last week over the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the 17-year-old law barring same-sex marriage, Justice Antonin Scalia noted the number of states that are permitting gays and lesbians to marry. "There has been a sea change," he said, "between now and 1996."

He was right about that, but it's not just gay marriage. A range of change is taking place socially, culturally, legally in the United States. Thomas Jefferson, in a 1787 letter, advocated "rebellion" every 20 years for the nation to keep up with itself. That may be too strong a word. Matt Miller, a Washington Post columnist, probably comes closer with the phrase "accelerated evolution." Whatever word one chooses, the times they are a-changin'.

I am talking not about the Internet and all that, though obviously, like Gutenberg's press, new technology is always a game changer. I mean social and cultural changes, and soon enough legal changes -- from sexual attitudes to tea party ideology. American attitudes, thinking and actions are changing faster than many of us, particularly holders of power, can easily handle.

In the same week, last week, there were hints of more critical thinking than usual. Studies reported in The New York Times that more women are in colleges than men, and the number of men applying is in decline exactly as the economy is demanding more and more education and specialization. The day's Los Angeles Times, citing different studies, showed this headline:

"Women Outshine Men as Corporate Leaders; they are more likely to consider competing interests in making decisions, study finds."

That study, done jointly by American and Canadian universities, published in the International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, was based on interviews with 600 members of corporate boards of directors -- 25 percent of them female. "Our findings," states the journal, "show that having women on boards is no longer just the right thing to do, but also the smart thing to do." Women are less constrained by rules, reported the Times, and more likely "to use collaboration, cooperation and consensus-building."

To put that into harder numbers: Businesses with female directors are 20 percent less likely to go bankrupt.

Next to its Supreme Court coverage on Thursday, The New York Times had this headline:

"States Shifting Aid for Schools to the Families"

That story reports that many states are beginning to redefine education. Among the things they are doing or considering are voucher systems, tax-credit schemes and directly financing private schools.

That same day's Los Angeles paper mocked a local junior high school flag football league for forcing its undefeated champions to forfeit all their games because the champions had a girl linebacker. Sequoyah School in Pasadena (eight wins, no losses) was then pushed out of the league.

There is enough statistical evidence to show that government can't keep up with individuals determined to broaden their horizons and stretch their options. Nor can courts or athletic leagues.

Whatever the Supreme Court in its wisdom decides this time won't matter in the long run. The change has come in individual decisions by millions of people. The driving force in the marriage case is the same as in disputes and debates about immigration, legal and illegal. In both cases, the dams of law and discrimination are up against forces many leaders cannot defeat. That force, or fact, unrecognized by many politicians, is that the legal and illegal immigrants are related; they are family. The same is true of attitudes toward homosexuality: Gays and straights are related; they are family.

Not guilty plea for Okla. man in deaths of 2 girls

FILE - In this Monday, April 23 2012 file photo, murder suspect Kevin Sweat is escorted from the courthouse following a hearing in Okemah, Okla. Sweat, who is charged with first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of two girls near Weleetka more than four years ago is scheduled for arraignment Friday. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

OKEMAH, Okla. (AP) — A judge entered a not guilty plea Thursday on behalf of a man accused of gunning down two girls in rural Oklahoma.

District Court Judge Lawrence Parish entered the plea on behalf ofKevin Sweat, 27, who faces two counts of first-degree murder in the June 2008 shooting deaths of 13-year-old Taylor Placker and 11-year-old Skyla Whitaker. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Members of the victims' families were present Thursday whenSweat, who wore a bulletproof vest over his orange jail-issued jumpsuit and was shackled by his wrists and ankles, was formally arraigned on the charges. No trial date was set.

At a hearing in January, prosecutors played a recorded video statement in which Sweat told an investigator he shot what he said were "the demons" who approached him along an unpaved road less than a half-mile from Placker's home near Weleetka.

"I see demons, vampires ... monsters, demons, whatever. I do have some problems," Sweat told Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agent Kurt Titsworth in the video. "I was scared. ... They were still coming at me, so I shot them."

Sweat was already in custody in connection with the July 2011 death of his girlfriend, 23-year-oldAshley Taylor, when he was charged with the girls' deaths. He pleaded not guilty to a first-degree murder charge in Taylor's death in August 2012. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in that case as well.

Attorneys indicated Thursday that evidence in the two cases are intertwined.

"We're headed toward doing two cases at once," defense attorney Wayne Woodyard of the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System told Parish during Thursday's hearing.

Defense attorneys have asked Parish to relocate Sweat's June 10 trial in Taylor's death because of the amount of media coverage the cases have received in Okfuskee County. Parish is expected to rule on the motion in two or three weeks.

"It's going to be difficult to find jurors who don't know anything about this case," Woodyard said.

Another of Sweat's attorneys, Peter Astor, told reporters that the deaths of the two girls had a strong impact on area residents, who may have developed a bias against Sweat.

"In a way they're going to be tried together," Astor said. "There can't be any doubt that the Weleetka case has received widespread media coverage from the beginning."

Following the hearing, Taylor's father, Michael Taylor, said moving the trial will be inconvenient but he is willing to travel to whatever venue is chosen.

"If I have to go halfway across the country, I'll go halfway across the country," he said.

Sweat was ordered to stand trial for Taylor's death in May 2012 following a preliminary hearing where investigators testified they recovered "severely fragmented" human bones from the remains of a pile of burned debris next to Sweat's father's home. The bones were consistent with Taylor's although not an exact match.

Sweat told investigators different stories about what had happened to Taylor before claiming that he had fatally stabbed her in the neck in an area park and pushed her body into the lake. But investigators said they found no blood on the pier and did not find her body.

Newtown Families in Bloomberg Anti-Gun Ads

Mayors Against Illegal Guns

The families of four victims from the December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary appear in two new anti-gun TV ads out this morning, part of an effort to reinvigorate a lagging campaign for new gun controls.

"Don't let the memory of Newtown fade without doing something real," Terri Rousseau, the mother of slain teacher Lauren Rousseau, says in an emotionally charged appeal.

The ads also feature personal testimonials from Neil Heslin, father of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis; Chris and Lynn McDonnell, parents of 7-year-old Grace McDonnell; and Jillian Soto, sister of teacher Vicki Soto, 27. All talk about their loved ones and what it was like to learn the tragic news on Dec. 14, 2012.

You can see the spots HERE and HERE.

The ads, which will run only in Connecticut, come as that state's legislature considers state-level gun control measures. They were produced by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" and released in conjunction with a "National Day to Demand Action" taking place today across the country.

President Obama's outside advocacy group - Organizing for Action - is also part of the effort. More than 100 events are planned, organizers said.

At the White House later this morning, Obama will surround himself by victims of gun violence, their families and law enforcement officials to add his voice to the campaign. The Newtown families appearing in the ads are expected to attend.

The president and other advocates are still calling for legislation to impose comprehensive background checks; limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines; and an assault-weapons ban. But such measures face increasingly tough odds of passage in Congress.

Earlier this week, three Republican senators threatened to filibuster next month's expected Senate debate on a package of gun-control measures. That package does not include an assault-weapons ban, although Senate Democrats say it will get a vote as a separate amendment to the bill.

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