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Akamai Provides Insight into Internet Denial of Service Attack
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - June 16, 2004 - A widely reported, distributed denial of service attack yesterday impacted Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the global leader in distributed computing solutions and services. The incident, which took place between approximately 8:30 AM ET and 10:45 AM ET on Tuesday, June 15th, was caused by a sophisticated, large-scale attack that Akamai identified as being targeted at specific Web sites that are Akamai customers.
In response to earlier reports by a third-party website measurement service that inaccurately portrayed the impact of the attack on specific Web sites, Akamai released today the following information (based on Akamai's over 1,100 total customers under long-term services contracts):
The problem was quickly detected by Akamai's automated monitoring systems, and Akamai personnel mitigated the attack by working closely with customers, making key adjustments in the Company's infrastructure, and cooperating with several network partners around the world to shut down the source of the attack. Further, Akamai is cooperating with U.S. Federal law enforcement agencies that are investigating the incident.
The attack impacted Akamai's Internet naming functionality (Domain Name Service, or DNS) and resulted in delays in DNS name resolutions and, in some cases, timed-out DNS requests. Some Internet end users trying to reach affected sites experienced slow responses from Akamai's DNS servers, resulting in page time-outs. The attack did not cause an outage in Akamai services, as Akamai continued to serve both DNS requests and website content for customers throughout the period of the attack. The Akamai Domain Name Service returned to normal by 10:45 AM ET on Tuesday, June 15th.
Third party website measurement services can significantly overstate the impact of attacks such as this one, because these services use private name servers to check website availability. These private name servers do not serve traffic to actual end users. If one of these private name servers is unable to reach a site or to get a DNS resolution immediately, it may record that the site is unavailable. In contrast, actual end users are served by public name servers that make repeated attempts to perform DNS resolutions and, once successful, the appropriate domain name is shared with thousands of end users, who are then able to reach the websites they want. During Tuesday's attack, public name servers used by most end users worldwide were able to get DNS resolutions from Akamai, so most end users were able to access the Web content they wanted.
For more information about Akamai, visit www.akamai.com.
Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any future attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by unauthorized users or others, failure to have available sufficient transmission capacity, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.
| Contacts: |
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Jeff Young Media Relations Akamai Technologies 617-444-3913 jyoung@akamai.com |
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Sandy Smith Investor Relations Akamai Technologies 617-444-2804 ssmith@akamai.com |
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - June 16, 2004 - A widely reported, distributed denial of service attack yesterday impacted Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the global leader in distributed computing solutions and services. The incident, which took place between approximately 8:30 AM ET and 10:45 AM ET on Tuesday, June 15th, was caused by a sophisticated, large-scale attack that Akamai identified as being targeted at specific Web sites that are Akamai customers.
In response to earlier reports by a third-party website measurement service that inaccurately portrayed the impact of the attack on specific Web sites, Akamai released today the following information (based on Akamai's over 1,100 total customers under long-term services contracts):
- the domain name service impact was limited to approximately 4 percent of the Akamai customer base
- 2 percent had noticeable impact
- less than 1 percent of Akamai customers had a significant impact affecting more than 20 percent of their users
The problem was quickly detected by Akamai's automated monitoring systems, and Akamai personnel mitigated the attack by working closely with customers, making key adjustments in the Company's infrastructure, and cooperating with several network partners around the world to shut down the source of the attack. Further, Akamai is cooperating with U.S. Federal law enforcement agencies that are investigating the incident.
The attack impacted Akamai's Internet naming functionality (Domain Name Service, or DNS) and resulted in delays in DNS name resolutions and, in some cases, timed-out DNS requests. Some Internet end users trying to reach affected sites experienced slow responses from Akamai's DNS servers, resulting in page time-outs. The attack did not cause an outage in Akamai services, as Akamai continued to serve both DNS requests and website content for customers throughout the period of the attack. The Akamai Domain Name Service returned to normal by 10:45 AM ET on Tuesday, June 15th.
Third party website measurement services can significantly overstate the impact of attacks such as this one, because these services use private name servers to check website availability. These private name servers do not serve traffic to actual end users. If one of these private name servers is unable to reach a site or to get a DNS resolution immediately, it may record that the site is unavailable. In contrast, actual end users are served by public name servers that make repeated attempts to perform DNS resolutions and, once successful, the appropriate domain name is shared with thousands of end users, who are then able to reach the websites they want. During Tuesday's attack, public name servers used by most end users worldwide were able to get DNS resolutions from Akamai, so most end users were able to access the Web content they wanted.
For more information about Akamai, visit www.akamai.com.
Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act
The release contains information about future expectations, plans and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors including, but not limited to, the effects of any future attempts to intentionally disrupt our services or network by unauthorized users or others, failure to have available sufficient transmission capacity, a failure of Akamai's network infrastructure, and other factors that are discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.
