Information Renaissance: Cyber Security
The Attack
On October 21, 2007, the Colorado Rockies could not sell their World Series tickets due to an attack on their internet servers. Representatives of Major League’s Baseball internet wing said that the system was overloaded by powerful computers. The CEO of MLB.com said that the tickets brokers could have been responsible. A representative of McAfee Aver Labs, said that the servers were not correctly configured.
Type of Attack and CERT
The reason why the Rockies fans could not buy tickets is because of the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) that disrupted their system. Denial of Services attacks happen when requests are sent to a server from different IP addresses. These requests overwhelm the servers, and ultimately slow them down or completely stop them. Information about this type of attack can be found at www.cert.org. CERT which is short for Computer Emergency Response Team; is an organization devotes its resources to resist attacks on network systems. CERT works with the Department of Homeland Security to prevent cyber attacks across the internet.
References
(2007, October 22). SI.com. Rockies’ WS tickets sell out online Retrieved October 26, 2007 from http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/baseball/mlb/specials/playoffs/2007/10/23/bc.bbo.rockies.seriesti.ap/index.html
(2007 August 24). CERT. CERT FAQ Retrieved November 17, 2007 from http://www.cert.org/faq/