Lumeta Chief Scientist Bill 'Ches' Cheswick Comments on Recent DDOS Attack.

Business/High Tech Editors

SOMERSET, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 24, 2002

The Internet sustained its largest and most sophisticated attack ever, starting late Monday, according to officials at key online backbone organizations.

Around 5:00 pm EDT on Monday, a "distributed denial of service" (DDOS) attack struck the 13 "root servers" that provide the initial translation services for the Internet addresses found on trucks, consumer brands, and everything else. Though this was the worst of these attacks so far, most Internet users worldwide were largely unaffected.

"This week's attacks are no surprise. We researchers have known that the root servers and routing infrastructures are the two Achilles' Heels of the Internet. This attack went after the root servers," said Bill Cheswick, chief scientist of Lumeta. "The effects were not noticeable to the average user -- although they certainly got the attention of those running the servers. Next time, we may not be so lucky."

He continued, "The Internet remains a giant research project so it's inevitable that attacks of this nature will continue and potentially cripple private and public sector organizations."

"Solutions and mitigations for problems like these bring together people who have built and run the Internet. This is one of the strengths that has helped over the years with problems like the Morris worm in 1988, SYN packet attacks in 1996, and so on. There are a number of technical solutions getting batted around. It's not clear how this is going to be solved. And, of course, there is politics as well. Some of the root servers handled the attacks much better than others."

Cheswick has more than 30 years of security experience and is the author of one of the most highly regarded security books. The second edition of "Firewalls and Internet Security: Repelling the Wily Hacker" co-authored by Cheswick is currently under technical review. It will be released in Spring 2003.

About Lumeta Corp.

Lumeta Corporation takes a revolutionary approach to network management and security. Originating from Bell Labs Research, Lumeta's patent-pending technologies provide comprehensive, foundational knowledge about IP infrastructures to help optimize and proactively secure networks. Led by CEO Tom B. Dent, the management team includes world-renowned author and security expert Bill "Ches" Cheswick.

Lumeta is the source of network knowledge for the network administrators, CIOs and CFOs, who are accountable for their corporate network infrastructures.

Headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey, Lumeta serves leading Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies. Investors include: Wachovia Strategic Ventures Group, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Gotham, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, meVC Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund I, and New Venture Partners, LLC. For more information, visit the Lumeta Web site at www.lumeta.com