FBI Hit With Denial-of-Service Attack

"It was just another denial-of-service attack--we had two," says Debra Weierman, an FBI spokesperson, adding that the other attack occurred last spring.

The recent attack on the FBI's site followed similar attacks early this month on commercial sites such as eBay and Yahoo. The FBI responded to the spate of attacks by issuing an advisory on how to protect against such incidents.

According to Weierman, FBI officials responded to the attack on their own site by working with their Internet service provider, IBM, to combat the problem. Although traffic to the site was slowed for "several hours," the attack did no other damage, Weierman says.

The Web site is "not hooked into the mainframe, so it had no effect on day-to-day operations," she says.

The attack is still under investigation, and Weierman won't speculate about why the FBI site was targeted.