Particularly disturbing to Savage was that 5 percent of the attacks targeted crucial computers at the heart of the Internet. Before this, no one knew how widespread of a problem it is. Web sites based in Romania and Brazil were attacked at exceptionally high rates. Some victims were targeted repeatedly. The study found that five targets were attacked as many as 70 times in three weeks.
Home computers are also at risk.
Savage believes that many of those kinds of attacks were hackers carrying out personal vendettas. One attack documented by the researchers flooded the targeted Web site with 600,000 packets of data per second. The good news is that such attacks don't compromise data stored on the computers. Even the most unsophisticated hacker can bring down some of the most powerful computers of e-commerce and government. Asta Networks, which collaborated on the UCSD study, is one of several start-up companies scrambling to bring to market a technology that can fend off the assaults.