If you logged on to Yahoo's website on February 7, you saw something truly scary--a blank screen. So began the worst attack in Internet history by hackers. These are computer whizzes who know how to break into other people's computers. It continued for three days and froze some big sites on the Web, including eBay and Amazon.com.
The FBI launched a full-scale manhunt in cyberspace. Agents lurked in chat rooms, hoping to overhear someone bragging about the crime. By last Friday there were clues but no suspects.
It seems the hackers planned the attack last year. They secretly sent out special programs, known as scripts, to large computers, called servers, which direct traffic on the Internet. When the criminals gave the electronic signal, the script programs bombarded target sites with junk messages that clogged the system.
How do we best protect the Web? Politicians, security experts and Web executives discussed that question in meetings last week. An attack like this was bound to happen, said President Bill Clinton, because of the Web's success. Everyone agreed that now is the time to safeguard the Web, before there is a bigger crisis.