KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: U.S. officials are looking into a series of Internet hacking attacks launched across the country today. Unlike previous hackings, the impact from this attack appears to be limited. CNN's Jeanne Meserve joins us now from Washington with more on which sites are being targeted -- Jeanne.</s>JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, U.S. government officials say the attacks against Internet service providers or ISPs began last night, and are continuing today, but that thus far there have been no service interruptions. Officials say Italian authorities alerted the National Infrastructure Protection Center to the possibility of distributed denial of service attacks against ISPs and the National Infrastructure Protection Center, or NIPC, responded by putting a warning on its Web site Monday evening. The attacks targeted ISPs on the East coast in early hours of this morning. As time went on, they shifted to the West coast. Authorities tell CNN they do not as yet have a sense of where the attacks are originating, but an official with the president's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board says there has been no evidence that al Qaeda has to date ever participated in such an attack, that it has used the Internet to gather information rather than disrupt operations. Government officials say that often in denial of service attacks, multiple computers are used to flood one ISP to the point where it can't keep up and shuts down. But in this instance, it appears that the number of computers used was limited in number. A computer expert outside of government said that hackers may have deliberately given that impression to mislead investigators. The expert adds that while posting the NIPC warning was the right thing to do, the warning was not specific enough to be particularly helpful. He adds that these attacks happen all the time, and the only way to defend against them is to employ tough security procedures, something the effected ISPs apparently had done -- Kyra.</s>PHILLIPS: Jeanne Meserve, thank you. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Series of Hacking Attempts Launched Today