In early February, hackers assaulted at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic in the most significant attack against the Internet since 2002.
But according to an ICANN report, the distributed denial-of-service attack on the Domain Name System (DNS) proved the strength of the Anycast load-balancing system — a new security measure employed by ICANN.
“The Internet sustained a significant distributed denial-of-service attack, originating from the Asia-Pacific region, but stood up to it,” the ICANN report said.
According to ICANN, the only servers adversely affected during the attack were those without the Anycast system installed. At the time, ICANN was still testing the system.
The 13 root servers — represented by letters — are located across the globe. The root servers work as a kind of a backup for the servers maintained by Internet service providers. They are queried only when ISP servers don’t have the correct address for a website.
If the DNS system were to go down, websites would be unreachable and email would be undeliverable.
“With the Anycast technology apparently proven, it is likely that the remaining roots — D, E, G, H and L — will move over soon,” the report said.
Anycast was developed in 2002 after an attack that managed to overload nine of the 13 root servers.
Despite successfully repelling the February attack, ICANN is still trying to figure out the precise techniques employed by the attackers.