Marshall Islands Attacked

The Marshall Islands, an island chain housing 55,000+ people came under attack today.
The attack didn't involve bombs, missiles, guns, or any invading forces. This attack was brought about by a small group of "Hackers", who executed a distributed denial of service attack on the National Telecommunications Authority. This attack did not destroy, or damage any property/infrastructure, rather, temporarily cut off communications with the outside world. Marshall Island residents were still able to communicate inside the NTA network. The attack was a generically low-tech one, consisting of a mass spamming of the mail servers. The incoming spam filled up all the routes for mail exiting, thus rendering the servers useless. These spam mails were sent via a series of zombie computers from around the world. Presumably an individual (Re: One Person) had complete control of all the zombies from a private IRC channel, and is still executing the attack from there.

As of Late, "Botnets" have become an increasingly lucrative business for hackers. While relatively easy to setup, Renting a Botnet out could net one upwards of 10,000 US dollars.

As of Wednesday, June 25, external communications with the nation have still not been restored.

Would it be wrong for me to point out that the Marshall Islands were also where we tested the Nuclear Bomb? Recently it came out that the US was working on developing a "Carpet Bombing" technique for shutting down a nations IT infrastructure. What motivation would any individual or group have at shutdown a national infrastructure?
I Believe this may be the first in an unfortunate series of internet militarization tests.

Microsoft A Good Guy?

In a recent set of closed door meetings, Microsoft met with Law Enforcement Officials to help solve a rash of crimes. Although Microsoft has generally gotten a bad-wrap for Bullying opponents out of the market place, it seems all that consolidation of resources is finally paying off. They gave a tool to the Officials that allows them to track botnets as they progress! How is this achieved you may ask? By tracking your computer :) Thats right- The Malicious Software Removal Tool is now Identifying you to law enforcement as a part of a global botnet! Oh Happy Day! We don't know exactly what the name is, what technology it uses, or even if it really exists- The Microsoft spokesperson offered this explanation: " Although Microsoft is reluctant to give out details on its botnet buster -- the company said that even revealing its name could give cyber criminals a clue on how to thwart it "

All my indicators went off at that comment- It seems that Microsoft is now engaging in the Propoganda market. We know who you are but we aren't going to do anything! Okay.

From a Microsoft White Paper:
With regard to phishing and spam, for example, it engaged in broad consumer education campaigns and worked on developing technological solutions such as phishing filters and SenderID. For both phishing and botnets, Microsoft began working more extensively with law enforcement to identify phishers and botnet herders in an attempt to create deterrent to such activity, even though the deterrent effect is limited by the current environment because it is hard to find offenders, and criminal penalties may be applied without sufficient force.