Uecomm's AU network hit by attackers - News - Security

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Uecomm's AU network hit by attackers

By Patrick Gray, 0
September 25, 2003
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Uecomm-s-AU-network-hit-by-attackers/0,130061744,120278980,00.htm

Australian customers of broadband data services provider Uecomm were frustrated by two hours of intermittent service today, as malicious hackers flooded the network with spurious traffic.

The service difficulties struck at around 10:20am and lasted until 12:30pm, according to Brendon Park, Uecomm's director of products and marketing. "[The traffic] actually originated from one of our customers, but obviously I can't tell you who. That wouldn't be good form," Park told ZDNet Australia .

"We've informed them, and they've taken steps to resolve it," he said.

Unlike a traditional denial of service (DoS) attack, Park says the spurious traffic wasn't actually aimed at a particular target. "I believe what happened is someone hacked into their systems and generated traffic... it wasn't aimed at anyone," he said. Maybe they were the target... it's a good way to give someone a bad name if they generate DoS traffic."

Uecomm's services have been fully restored. The company is currently upgrading its network, Park said, so the timing of the attack was unfortunate. "We're actually upgrading the core network to Cisco 7600s and our border routers to 7300s and that will probably assist us in the future... we'll be less at risk from DoS attacks," he added.