First detected late last year, the new attacks direct such massive amounts of spurious data against victim computers that even flagship technology companies could not cope. In one of the early cases examined, the unknown assailant apparently seized control of an Internet name server in South Africa and deliberately corrupted its contents.

Name servers are specialized computers that help direct Internet traffic to its destinations.

The attacker then sent falsified requests to the compromised directory computer, which unleashed overwhelming floods of amplified data aimed wherever the attacker wanted.

Saw this on Slashdot which makes 2 "serious security issues" reported there in the last 2 days that aren't a big deal. In case you didn't get the memo, you can use DNS poisoning to launch DDoS attacks. The silly part is if you can do DNS poisoning you have man-in-the-middled everyone (cert sigs excluded). You already won so whats the point?

Scary DNS attack really quite stupid.