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The FBI's cybersecurity agency has issued an advisory warning that increased Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are possible, as a digital continuation of the terrorist attacks against targets in New York and near Washington, D.C. last week.

Denial of Service attacks are attacks that flood target computers with so many requests for information that they are overloaded and are unable to respond to legitimate requests for service. In a DDoS attack, multiple computers worldwide are controlled remotely and used as launch pads to flood target systems. Such an attack knocked major Web sites, including Yahoo.com and Amazon.com, offline for several days in February 2000.

The National Infrastructure Protection Center, the FBI's cybersecurity arm, says DDoS attacks may begin to appear Tuesday, because a group of Web site defacers called the Dispatchers have said they will be ready for such action then. The Dispatchers have already claimed responsibility for defacing some Web sites of organizations related to last week's attacks. They have also said they have begun to target infrastructure components such as routers for attack, the NIPC says.

The NIPC also offers a downloadable tool to help systems administrators check whether their systems are infected with common DDoS tools, and vulnerable to be used in a DDoS attack.

Hacking Reported

Tuesday's advisory comes on the heels of a similar one issued last Thursday, which warns of possible increases in cyberattacks. The FBI said it expected Web defacements and viruses, targeted against the "perceived perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks."

Such incidents have already begun occurring. A hacker recently cracked a German-based Islamist Web site, publishing on the Web the hundreds of e-mail addresses of subscribers to its mailing list. One subscriber is a suspect in last week's terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

The perpetrators of last week's attacks are believed by U.S. intelligence officials to have links to Islamic extremist groups. U.S. President George Bush and other government leaders, however, have stressed that the attackers are not supported by mainstream Islamic doctrine.

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