How hackers could decapitate the internet

The term "Operation Blackout" was coined and it caused much discussion in all the usual forums.Those issuing the threat even stated how they would do it. They claimed they could disable the Domain Name Service (known by engineers as the DNS) and that would stop the internet. How so? The Domain Name Service is what converts the web addresses you type into your browser (such as www.bbc.co.uk) into what the internet actually uses: IP addresses (something like 212.58.244.66).

It is essentially the phone book for the internet. If you could prevent access to the phone book then you would effectively render the web useless.The theory behind the proposed attack is based on the fact that the Domain Name Service is a tree structure: it starts with 13 servers at the top level and each of those talks to the next level down, which then pass it on to a further level down, and so on.