Vendors Fixing Bug That Could Crash Internet Systems

Internet infrastructure vendors are working on patches for a set of security flaws that could help hackers knock servers offline with very little effort. The security community has been buzzing about the bugs since Tuesday, when security researcher Robert Hansen discussed the problem on his blog.

Technical details on the vulnerabilities have not been released, but the security experts who discovered the problem, Robert Lee and Jack Louis of security vendor Outpost24, say that they can knock Windows, Linux, embedded systems and even firewalls offline with what's known as a denial of service (DOS) attack. The flaws lie in the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) software used by these systems to send data over the Internet.