HI all, Does any one here know what a "ping flood" or "ping Attack" is I have an always on cable connection to the web and my personal firewall software emailed me at work today to notify me of an attempted attack on my computer back at home How serious is this???? Mocap

Moved to news and team contact.

I have heard, and it is only in newsgroups and chatting with others, that Red China has conscripted a very large army of hackers, and directed them to attack and invade any and all internet servers here in the free world, specifically within the U.S. borders. You may have experienced a preemptive intrusion from one of their attempts, or from another source. According to newsgroup sources, the main thrust of the assualt will begin on May 1st, but that is not to say, some won't do a bit of early probing before the flood is sent out. Just keep your firewall hot, and an eye on your system. Eternal vilgilance is the price of liberty, and of a trojan/virus free operating system. =)

Thanks for the info I keep net barrier on real time monitoring 24 hours a day Mocap

And so the "new" type of war fare begins - the main land chinese are not the only guilty parties of server assault - however, due to recent events reinforce your fire walls and remember the best defence is defence in depth. Thanks for the update

A ping flood attack is where someone starts ALOT of individual machines on the internet hitting a single site. This overloads the site and will eventually cause a denial of service. This is the same thing that happened a couple of years ago when eBay and Yahoo were attacked and brought down. It is non-damaging, but will cause delays in internet services as your network card is too busy trying to keep up with the ping requests to serve out real data.

Maybe non damaging to the general public and as far as data is concerned, but when sites like Ebay and Yahoo go down, you're talking a major loss of revenue for these companies. Very damaging I'd say.

That's why I'm a tech and not a financial guy. ;-}