Dowbrigade

WASHINGTON (AP) – Researchers uncovered a serious flaw in the underlying
technology for nearly all Internet traffic, a discovery that led to an
urgent and secretive international effort to prevent global disruptions
of Web surfing, e-mails and instant messages.

The British government announced the vulnerability in core Internet technology
on Tuesday. Left unaddressed, experts said, it could allow hackers to knock computers
offline and broadly disrupt vital traffic-directing devices, called routers,
that coordinate the flow of data among distant groups of computers.

"Exploitation of this vulnerability could have affected the glue that holds
the Internet together," said Roger Cumming, director for England’s National
Infrastructure Security Coordination Centre.

The Homeland Security Department issued its own cyberalert hours later that attacks "could
affect a large segment of the Internet community." It said normal Internet
operations probably would resume after such attacks stopped.

The risk was similar to Internet users "running naked through the jungle,
which didn’t matter until somebody released some tigers," said Paul Vixie
of the Internet Systems Consortium Inc.

Doesn’t sound so bad, except for the part about the big kitties….

from AP