First a clip of a news article about it then some background:

Hackers Attack Key Net Traffic Computers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hackers briefly overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic Tuesday in one of the most significant attacks against the Internet since 2002.

Experts said the unusually powerful attacks lasted as long as 12 hours but passed largely unnoticed by most computer users, a testament to the resiliency of the Internet. Behind the scenes, computer scientists worldwide raced to cope with enormous volumes of data that threatened to saturate some of the Internet's most vital pipelines. ...

The motive for the attacks was unclear, said Duane Wessels, a researcher at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis at the San Diego Supercomputing Center. "Maybe to show off or just be disruptive; it doesn't seem to be extortion or anything like that," Wessels said.

Other experts said the hackers appeared to disguise their origin, but vast amounts of rogue data in the attacks were traced to South Korea. ...

Among the targeted "root" servers that manage global Internet traffic were ones operated by the Defense Department and the Internet's primary oversight body.

For the kids who cut class on DNS day, a very brief explanation:

Computers are bad with names but good with numbers. People are good with names but bad with numbers. So we have "name servers" to translate easy to remember names to computer friendly numeric internet addresses. So you type in tech.wizbangblog.com and a name server translates that to be 207.58.144.100.

There are 13 main (root) name servers that act as internet traffic cops. -- Or to put it another way, when they see an internet they decided which tube it goes down. (that jokes still isn't old)

It should be obvious that if someone managed to take down all 13 root servers there would be no data flowing thru the tubes. Taking down 3 is actually a pretty impressive task. The physical and network security around these servers is extraordinarily robust.

As far as the motive, I have thought for years that these attacks are proof of concept practice runs. One day someone will launch the mother of all internet attacks and the net will be down for 3 days.

Of course then the environmentalist will blame it on global warming.

We'll have more on this story as it develops.