Gaugeing the fallout from DoS

It says a lot about the information technology industry that NASDAQ figures showed little fluctuation in the days following the attacks.

Nor have the more serious attacks involving theft of credit-card numbers caused the bottom to fall out of the industry. The day after the attacks, NASDAQ showed an overall increase, and reported that as of March 28, the technology sector is trading at 50 times fiscal expectations for 2000.

The anxieties sparked by the attacks have been mitigated not only by the proven resilience of the industry, but also by the responses they elicited in their victims. Pursglove said eBay "began to have a more open dialogue with other Internet sites (for) exchanging information."

The DoS attacks showed that the openness and freedom of exchange in the hacker community result in positive change, and that by mirroring that openness e-commerce sites and ISPs have the potential to improve their systems and contribute to the greater safety of the Internet.

"If a solution is to be found," says Pursglove, "the industry itself will have to find it."

Those with a commercial stake in the Internet have seen that the information sharing of the hacker community can work for them as well, yet another positive lesson learned as a result of the attacks.

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