Powerful attack on global Internet on Monday evening
According to this New York Times story,
An unusually powerful electronic attack on Monday briefly crippled 9 of the 13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic, officials disclosed today.
...The F.B.I. and White House were investigating. One official described the attack as the largest and most sophisticated assault on the servers in the history of the Internet. The origin of the attack was not known.
Seven of the 13 servers failed to respond to legitimate network traffic and two others failed intermittently during the attack, officials said.
...These experts said the attack, which started about 4:45 p.m. on Monday, transmitted data to each targeted root server at 30 to 40 times the normal amounts. One said that just one additional failure would have disrupted e-mail messages and Web browsing across parts of the Internet.