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Monday, February 10, hackers are reported to have exploited a fundamental weakness in the Internet itself to stage a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against unidentified computer servers in Europe.

Rather than exploiting flaws in a computer operating system, Monday's attack instead used known weaknesses in the Network Time Protocol (NTP), a nearly 30-year-old Internet system used to synchronize computer clocks around the world.

The attack was against a client of the online security firm Cloudflare,

Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince tweeted word of the attack on one of his clients, describing it as "very big" -- about 400 gigabits per second (Gbps) -- the "biggest" of its kind. 100Gbps larger than an attack on anti-spam service Spamhaus last year. He also said his company was mitigating the effects of the attack.