How to hack?

Here are details of how they go about bringing down a website:

-- The weapon of choice is a piece of software named a "Low Orbit Ion Cannon" (LOIC) which was developed to help Internet security experts test the vulnerability of a website to a DDoS attack. The LOIC is available for download on the Internet.

-- The LOIC can be controlled centrally by an administrator in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, a type of computer chat room, which can seize control of a network of computers whose combined power is used in a DDoS attack.

-- The attack is aimed at the target website and when the LOICs are activated they flood the website with a deluge of data requests at the same time.

-- The DDoS attack prevents the overloaded server from responding to legitimate requests and slows down the website to a crawl or shuts it down totally.

-- The attacks are coordinated in the IRC channel and on Thursday, around 3,000 people were active on the channel at one stage.

-- The current situation has some historical parallels to a decade ago, when, in February, 2000, several of the biggest U.S. ecommerce and media sites came under attack in denial-of-service attacks. Targets included Amazon.com, eBay, E-Trade, Buy.com and CNN, the news site. The ecommerce sites endured substantial losses during the outages, at a time when the Internet shopping phenomenon remained in its infancy.

(Reporting by Marius Bosch and Eric Auchard)