[Ares-races] Internet attack downs Web giants Yahoo, Google and other sites

[BillLennox at aol.com]

Source:  
http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/15/technology/internet_attack.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes

Internet attack downs Web giants

Access to Yahoo, Google and other sites disrupted for two hours.

June 15, 2004: 6:02 PM EDT 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A hacker attack on Internet services company Akamai 
Technologies Inc. disrupted access to large Web sites including those run by Yahoo 
Inc., Google, and Microsoft for up to two hours early Tuesday, according to 
Web tracker Keynote Systems Inc. 

Starting at about 8:30 a.m. EDT today, a major "Internet performance issue" 
was detected, according to Lloyd Taylor, vice president of technology and 
operations for Keynote, which tests and monitors Web sites.

"The availability issues were limited to several large sites, all of whom 
outsource their domain name server (DNS) services to Akamai. These sites dropped 
to near-zero availability," he said.

Availability was largely restored by about 10:45 a.m., Keynote said.

A spokesman for Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Akamai was not immediately 
available to comment.

Keynote, which counts Akamai as a customer, said that disruption was the 
result of some kind of attack, although they could not speculate who was 
responsible, or how it was launched.

"We can speculate that it was probably due to some kind of coordinated attack 
on the DNS infrastructure that Akamai hosts," said Keynote analyst Roopak 
Pitel. "We are reasonably confident that it wasn't a problem internal to Akamai."


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Bill Lennox
US Air Force (Retired)
Full Time College Student (Emergency Management)
KD7EFP
Assistant Emergency Coordinator - Plans (ARES), Washington County, Oregon
Assistant Radio Officer - Plans (RACES), Washington County, Oregon