In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun a criminal investigation into a series of attacks by computer hackers on Internet sites. The inquiry was ordered by the United States Attorney General, Janet Reno. The attacks blocked public access to well known retail and information sites for several hours, in what has been described as a threat to the US economy.
Companies call the problem a "denial of service attack" because their security systems are never actually penetrated, but hackers send so much information through that the site is blocked to other users. The websites affected included the book retailer amazon.com and the search engine Yahoo. Its President Jeff Mallet said that he was hopeful that the hackers could be traced.
