The recent, well-publicized cyberattack on Google was just the
latest skirmish in a long war. And like most long wars, this one
features an arms race, as hackers seek out new security holes,
and web site administrators try to close them. Systems for
detecting attacks against networked computers are commercially
available, and academic and industrial researchers are
constantly improving them. But when a web site is under attack,
its only viable defense may be to take its servers offline,
which, in the short term, can cost it money in lost revenue and
productivity and, in the long term, could hurt its credibility.
Indeed, knocking a site offline may be an attackers' sole
intention. MIT researchers have developed a system to keep web
servers -- or, for that matter, any Internet-connected computers
-- running even when they're under attack. The work was funded
largely by DARPA, and in a pair of tests whose thoroughness is
unusual in academia, DARPA hired a group of computer security
professionals outside MIT to t