Panix, the NY area's oldest and largest Internet Service Provider, has been under attack from unknown sources since Friday, September 6 at about 5:30pm.

Alexis Rosen, President and co-owner of Public Access Networks Corp., which runs Panix, said on Wednesday that attacks have been made against different computers on the provider's network, including mail, news and web servers, user "login" machines, and name servers-- all key computers that provide customers with access to one or more major Internet services.

Attacks consist of flooding the machines with so much data that they cannot respond to legitimate requests, and faking the origin of the hostile data. This makes it impossible to trace its source without a major effort on the part of all Internet service providers between Panix and the attacking party. This is equivalent to needing the participation of multiple telephone companies in tracing the origin of an international call.

The nature of the Internet, which is designed to let machines communicate with a minimum exchange of identifying information, makes *every* site on the Internet vulnerable to this sort of attack. No matter how much money, time, and engineering expertise is expended on the problem, the only solution involves strong cooperation on the part of all Internet service providers.