Cyber shock prods Silicon Valley companies to develop safety net

8220;The most important part to us was that the user information was not jeopardised,8221; said Shannon Stubo of Yahoo, which shut down for three hours on Monday after hackers deluged the site with information requests. 8220;We are taking measures to prevent this from happening again,8221; Stubo told Agence France Presse.

Amazon8217;s website had experienced no disruptions on Wednesday afternoon, Smith said. Company software experts were looking into ways of defending the site from future attacks, but refused to discuss specifics. 8220;Obviously, making details of what we are doing public would defeat the purpose,8221;Smith told AFP. While Silicon Valley e-commerce companies are focusing resources on guarding against cyber-vandalism, terrorism, and extortion, they are averse to giving away strategies. 8220;Because the Internet is an open environment, there is an ongoing risk to anyone who is on the web,8221; Yahoo8217;s Stubo said. Kevin Pursglove of eBay, a San Jose-based auction site, said on Wednesday his company planned to reach out to peers at other violated sites to develop a defence strategy. 8220;There will be greater strength in numbers,8221; Pursglove said. 8220;Maybe by working together, as well as with the FBI, we can come up with something that is going to work for everybody.8221;

Computer-users could Access eBay while it was under attack on Tuesday afternoon, but transaction time slowed to a crippling degree. More than eight million people use eBay daily, Pursglove said. 8220;No matter what kind of statement the responsible parties may be trying to make, it is obvious that they are showing tremendous disrespect for the users ofthese sites,8221; he said of the hackers.

United States Commerce secretary William Daley termed the cyber attacks as 8220;a wake-up call8221; for the web sector. He said the stunts that came 8220;out of the blue8221; underlined the vulnerability of the web8217;s infrastructure, and would spur efforts to beef up security. 8220;There is no surefire defence,8221; he told a press conference, but 8220;you have to be pretty blind if you don8217;t react after this8221;. Computer systems at federal agencies, particularly the Pentagon, were being screened to make sure they were not being used as launch pads, Daley said to AFP. There is no evidence to suggest this so far, the Commerce secretary added.

The department has also urged key private sector players and universities to do a clean sweep of their systems to ensure they have not been used as a staging post for a new class of hacking tool known as a 8220;distributed denial of service8221;.