The Marshall Islands’ National Telecommunications Authority was hit by a spam attack that managed to shut down email service for the islands. The NTA is the sole ISP for the region, and is reporting that the constant flood of spam acted like a DDoS attack. It’s been over 24hours and email service has still not been restored.

          “The government-owned National Telecommunications Authority (NTA) was hit with a sudden four-fold increase in incoming email, which it described as an attack by “zombie computers”, said an NTA spokesman. While NTA customers could send and receive emails to each other through the local system, virtually no non-NTA emails had been received since Monday, impacting local businesses, banks and government offices.”

This attack was a vivid illustration of why a country having a sole ISP is a very bad idea. It makes it very easy to wreck havoc on a county’s Internet infrastructure, and with so many vital services and businesses relying heavily on that infrastructure, a spam or hacker attack could be catastrophic. Not only is a sole ISP a security nightmare, but it also makes it quite likely to be affected by corruption and censorship, as we’ve seen recently in Burma and China.

The NTA has no estimate on when their service will be fully restored.