Lithuanian's braced for full blown DDoS attacks

Last weekend's mass Web site defacement that affected hundreds of Lithuanian businesses is being interpreted in some quarters as a warning shot and a pre-cursor to an all out DDoS attack on the Country's Internet infrastructure. The defacement of the Web sites with pro-soviet messages is being strongly linked with the recent law introduced by the Lithuanian Government banning the use of Soviet symbols in the Country and has chilling echoes of what happened last year in Estonia.

In this case the Lithuanian Government had been warned of the attack and were able to take appropriate action to harden their defences but many commercial sites were caught unawares. Fortunately in this particular case the damage was limited to some inconvenience for those who were victims but they may not get off so lightly if a DDoS attack is unleashed. Non-availability of critical Web services could have a devastating effect on any country's economy and if it is over a sustained period could seriously threaten individual companies who have built their businesses online.

As it would seem unlikely that the law will be changed any time soon both Government departments and the business community needs to seriously re-examine their DDoS defences as quickly as possible.