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Massive cyberattack hits Internet users

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By Doug Gross

(CNN) — Internet users around the globe were facing slowed down service thanks to what’s being called the biggest cyber attack in history.

The prolonged denial-of-service assault is targeting Spamhaus, a European spam-fighting group that has gone after a data-storage company that offers to host any content “except child porn and anything related to terrorism.”

The organization has been in a long-running feud with CyberBunker, which it says spammers use as a host to spray junk mail across the Web. Web security firm CloudFlare said Spamhaus contacted it last week, saying it had been hit with an attack big enough to knock its site offline.

Security experts say the attack uses more sophisticated techniques than most DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks and targets the Web’s infrastructure, which has led to other sites performing slowly.

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