What appeared to be a one-off denial of service (DDoS) attack Monday against the Web's most popular site, Yahoo, has turned into something else. We just don't yet know what.

A denial of service is one of the simplist attacks one can pull on a site. The idea is to flood the site with requests for data, and therefore clog the works. It is somewhat similar to getting a busy signal when using a telephone. To suggest that the sites are "under attack" is a bit misleading; a DDoS attack rarely means any data is lost or user information compromised.

The Hacker News Network today asked, "Who's next?" It's a valid enough question, as up until this point only high-profile commercial sites have been hit.

I suppose this will get everyones juices flowing about "cyber-terrorism," though I have to say I'm not sure how there's much terror in a DDoS.