Hack Shuts Down British ISP

In a dramatic example of the kind of damage that coordinated Internet attacks can cause, a British ISP Tuesday shut down its entire operation after a massive denial-of-service attack crippled its network for several days.

Cloud Nine Communications Ltd. announced this morning that it had decided to close its operations after company executives determined they needed to completely rebuild their entire network, something they couldnt afford to do.

Its unclear what damage the DDoS attack could have caused that would require such a dramatic solution.

The company is close to selling its assets to another British ISP, V21.co.uk Ltd., according to posts on ISPReview.com.

Cloud Nines troubles began several weeks ago when an attacker was able to determine the password to the ISPs firewall via a brute-force attack. Once the firewall was down, the cracker apparently launched a huge a DDoS attack against Cloud Nines Web and DNS servers, according to a company statement.

To that end, the company, based in Basingstroke, England, pulled the plug on its network.

Miszti and Parr apologized to their customers for their decision, but said they felt it was the only responsible option left.