RIAA droops under MyDoom attack

Johannesburg, 27 Feb 2004

The Recording Industry Association of America`s (RIAA) Web site is suffering under a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack by the MyDoom.F virus, says digital risk management company mi2g.

The Web site has reportedly been intermittently inaccessible from a number of cities around the world, including London, New York and Tokyo, it says.

MyDoom.F emerged late last week and is programmed to launch DDoS attacks on the Web sites of Microsoft and the RIAA. The RIAA is a music industry lobbying group that has sued online song swappers.

Mi2g says the RIAA Web site appears to be similar to that of the SCO Group Web site on 31 January before it was knocked out completely the following day by the MyDoom DDoS attack.

The response rate of the RIAA Web site is typically less than half a second when the home page is requested. Mi2g says the response rate has dilated to over five seconds as an average with interleaved periods of total failure from time to time, lasting half an hour to one hour.

However, when ITWeb tested the Web site, it opened almost immediately.

DK Matai, executive chairman of mi2g, says the Internet world could descend into "total anarchy" if organisations` online business can be threatened so overtly and their senior managements` policies can be challenged in this way.

RIAA may be paying the price for filing lawsuits against digital entertainment file sharers since September 2003, he says.

"MyDoom is exposing the vulnerability of the global digital eco-system. There could be more malware in the near future that could push the boot further than MyDoom and cripple airline services, telecommunications and other critical infrastructure," he says.

Mi2g says the combined economic damage of overt and covert hacker attacks, spam, phishing scams, malware proliferation and DDoS attacks is estimated to be between $68 billion and $83 billion worldwide as of February 2004.