On face value, somebody who is not knowledgeable in this area of technology might assume that this is because we could have traced the attacks to their sources. While that may also be true, that is not the reason I have related the two subjects. In fact, the recent denial of service attacks could have been easily defeated in a matter of seconds to minutes without any advanced technology or intense activities by any parties. While that may sound complicated, it is in fact very easy to do. In 1996, in response to the large number of address forgeries being exploited over the Internet at that time, I published a paper that showed how ISPs could eliminate address forgery of this sort with almost no cost and with very little time or effort consumed.
Similar challenges related to anonymity exist throughout the Internet today in other areas.
Vulnerable intermediary computers are used to 'bounce' these emails from the original source to the final destination, thus anonymizing the original source. I, for one, am tired of being slandered with anonymous postings on the Internet by those who I have associated with their criminal activities. I am personally in favor of the concept of anonymity with responsibility and have written on this subject in the past at some length. In my view, pseudonymity should be provided through brokers who can be held legally responsible for the actions of those they broker for, unless they provide the means to attribute information to its source under legally mandated conditions. Like the newspaper reporter who refuses to reveal a source, jail and contempt can be used to compel compliance.