Steinbring Inc.

It looks like this past Friday, the United States Commerce Department admitted this past friday that they have been the target of a DDoS attack for more then a month now.  The attack has originated from Chinese IP addresses and it is so bad that the commerce department is looking to replace hardware in an attempt to harden it’s systems.  One popular theory regarding this attack is that it is a botnet of home machines that may not of even been controlled from within the country.

I hate it when people don’t take the time to secure their systems.

The federal government’s Commerce Department admitted Friday that heavy attacks on its computers by hackers working through Chinese servers have forced the bureau responsible for granting export licenses to lock down Internet access for more than a month.
An attack against computers of the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) — the branch of Commerce responsible for overseeing U.S. exports which have both commercial and military applications — forced BIS to turn off Internet access in early September.
An unnamed senior Commerce official also said the department has decided it could not trust the computers — which were infected with rootkits — and will replace them rather than try to clean them. In the meantime, BIS workers have been hampered by the inability to easily communicate with other federal and state agencies, or with the companies applying for export licenses.

Link [ Via Computer World ]