DoS attack creates a dead Cert

The Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert) has been knocked offline by a denial of service (DoS) attack, just a day after the University of California reported that such attacks are on the increase.

The incident apparently began on Tuesday evening and was evidently one of the two per cent of DoS attacks that span over to the next day.

Access to the cert.org website, which provides security information and alerts, was denied on Tuesday and intermittent at best on Wednesday morning, but by yesterday afternoon normal service had been resumed.

A statement from the organisation said: "Our connection to the internet has been largely saturated by this activity. The www.cert.org website may be unavailable until the attack begins to subside."

Despite access to the site being compromised, Cert maintained that it was still able to send out alerts on any security issues. "We have alternative means to issue advisory notices as it becomes necessary," the organisation said.

Although it seems ironic that the group was crippled by such techniques that it was set up to warn others about, there's nothing like leading by example.

It is still unclear who was responsible for the attack, but speculation on the security front suggests that some people think the USA/China cyber war is still being waged.