Europe warns — correctly — of hack attack

The U.S. government Tuesday morning was monitoring attacks against U.S. Internet providers, hours after European authorities warned the FBI that such an onslaught was likely. A spike of data seven times larger than normal was aimed at East Coast ISPs and Web sites beginning about 2 a.m., the Associated Press reports. The attack then shifted to West Coast facilities. Because the campaign emanated from a relatively small number of computers, the targets were generally able to withstand the barrage by filtering data from the offending machines. Just before the data flood began, the FBI issued an extraordinary warning citing “credible but non-specific information that wide-scale hacker attacks” were planned against U.S. Web sites and Internet providers, the AP said. The European tip-off came from Italian authorities. No word on how they knew it was coming.