At long last, AT&T this week officially launched its CruiseCast in-car satellite service, boasting 22 video channels and 20 audio channels.

According to the telco, the service, which is part of a joint venture between AT&T and Raysat Broadcasting, includes content from USA, CNN Mobile, SciFi, Adult Swim, Discovery, Lifetime, Animal Planet, ESPN and others and costs $28 per month. The hardware itself retails for $1,299 and includes an antenna and an in-car “set-top box” device.

So far, about 600 retailers have signed on to to carry the CruiseCast hardware and sell subscriptions, and car makers are reportedly considering offering the system as a factory installed option on some new vehicles.

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A number of forums for satellite enthusiasts have emerged as the unlikely targets for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks over the past few weeks.

A DDoS attack attempts to flood the server hosting the site with junk requests, forcing the server to become overwhelmed and freeze up.

The source of the attack is usually a botnet of compromised computers known as zombie PC’s.

Techwatch itself was targeted repeatedly, experiencing spikes of over 2GB per second, before a solution was put in place.

Other major satellite forums have also apparently been targeted with denial of service floods over recent weeks.

S*tellites.co.uk, als*t.co.uk, and s*tpimps.com are other major satellite forums that were reported to have been attacked over March, as well as smaller boards such as s*t-haven, and d*nktenk.com.

When Techwatch was first attacked by repeated DDoS floods in February, messages posted to the forums from anonymous proxies suggested that extortion was the primary motivation.

However, there have been no such demands with the more recent wave of attacks over March.

This and the fact that it appears to be satellite forums specifically targeted has led some to suggest that one or more companies within the satellite industry itself may be responsible, even though DDoS attacks are considered a criminal offence in the UK.

In the meantime, all of the larger forums including Techwatch have taken different steps to minimise disruption caused by the DDoS attacks, and so far each appears to be staying online.

It remains to be seen if any identifying information on the attackers can be traced through continued monitoring of the situation.

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