According to experts who worked feverishly to thwart the attacks, the assault, which inundated the computers with enormous amounts of data, went largely unnoticed by most computer users around the globe.
Officials at the Homeland Security Department confirmed that their experts were monitoring the “anomalous” Internet traffic.
“There is no credible intelligence to suggest an imminent threat to the homeland or our computing systems at this time,” a Homeland Security release read.
Duane Wessels, a researcher at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis at the San Diego Supercomputing Center, said the motive for the attacks was unclear.
“Maybe to show off or just be disruptive; it doesn't seem to be extortion or anything like that,” Wessels said.
The attacks, which experts believe came from hackers based in South Korea, appeared to target UltraDNS, a company that operates servers that manages websites using the .org top-level domain.
ICANN and the Defense Department also weathered attacks.
“There was what appears to be some form of attack during the night hours here in California and into the morning,” ICANN CTO John Crain said. “I don't think anybody has the full picture. We're looking at the data.”
According to Crain, the recent attacks were less serious than the one against 13 root servers in on Oct. 23 in 2002.
