Huge numbers of websites attacked

Huge numbers of websites are being indirectly attacked, as the nameservers that tell the internet where to find them are directly targeted.

Using Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, the servers are flooded with useless information that can cause them to crash.

Individual servers and websites have been previously targeted in DDoS attacks, most recently by East European gangs involved in extortion rackets.

However, attacks against nameservers themselves can cause problems for hundreds of thousands of websites at once.

German domain name registrar Joker.com was first targeted over the weekend, affecting over half a million websites for half-and-hour.

Now huge US registrar VeriSign says it too has been targeted.

The attacks are a worrying development, because of the shotgun way they attack huge numbers of websites simultaneously.

However, experienced network administrators can relatively quickly block the different routes of a DDoS attack once it begins.