Lanka survives titans’ cyberspace feud intact

29 March 2013 06:13 am

The Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team|Coordination Center (SLCERT|CC) assured Sri Lanka has not been impacted by what has been reported as the 'biggest cyber attack of its kind in history' that was activated on Wednesday.

SLCERT|CC Information Security Engineer and Spokesman, Roshan Chandraguptha speaking to Daily Mirror said although they have not yet been able to verify the details of the attack, the information they have studied so far indicates although the attack was said to have affected Internet users from around the world, it has only heavily impacted countries in the European region as the two groups involved in the cyberspace feud are located within the European region.

The wider Internet users were affected yesterday as the service slowed down due to a retaliation that sparked between a spam-fighting group (Spamhaus) and a hosting firm (Cyberbunker).

The feud kicked off when Spamhaus took steps to block several servers of Cyberbunker following their statement that announced they would host 'anything except child pornography and terrorism related material'. Responding to the Spamhaus block, Cyberbunker stated the spam-fighting group was 'abusing their position'.

Following the alleged attack by Cyberbunker on Spamhaus yesterday, the spam-fighting group has accused the hosting firm of being involved with criminal gangs from Eastern Europe and Russia.

Meanwhile, experts have expressed their concern over the attack, pointing out it would systematically affect email as well as banking systems. Investigations into the attack have been launched by several cyberspace police forces.(Lakna Paranamanna)