Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Security
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

DoubleClick downed by denial-of-service attack

The massive attack crippled the company's Web site and ad servers

July 27, 2004 12:00 PM ET

IDG News Service - Internet advertising company DoubleClick Inc. was shut down today by a denial-of-service attack launched from computers on the Internet, a company spokeswoman confirmed.
The massive DoS attack began at about 10:30 a.m. EDT in the U.S. and crippled the company's Web site and its advertising servers, which distribute Web advertisements to other Web sites on the Internet. Ripple effects from the attacks were felt across the Internet, as Web pages that display DoubleClick ads struggled to retrieve them from the company's servers, causing "severe disruption" for DoubleClick customers, according to a company statement.
Leading Web sites all experienced significant slowdowns during the period covered by the attack, including Web pages for the Washington Post Co., New York Times Co., Cnet Networks Inc., Nortel Networks Corp. and InfoWorld magazine, according to Keynote Systems Inc., a Web performance measurement company in San Mateo, Calif.
Keynote measurements for the period covered by the attacks show that the "base page" -- or basic HTML documents -- served by those Web sites loaded quickly, but that the "full page," which includes any content the Web page points to, suddenly began to load very slowly, said Lloyd Taylor, vice president of operations at Keynote.
DoubleClick's DNS servers were the target of the attack, which came from unidentified "outside sources" and lasted for approximately four hours, said Jennifer Blum, vice president of corporate communications at DoubleClick.
DNS is the system of servers that matches up reader-friendly names such as DoubleClick.net with the numeric Internet Protocol addresses used by machines on the Internet to route traffic.
Keynote recorded a threefold slowdown in response time for Web pages beginning at about 7 a.m. EDT and ending at 1:30 p.m. EDT. The company doesn't know what caused the slowdowns, but the behavior of the pages is consistent with a DoS attack, Taylor said.
The performance of DoubleClick's servers had returned to normal by late this afternoon, Taylor said.
Staff members are taking steps to "resolve the situation permanently," Blum said.


Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

Security

Additional Resources

Xerox
By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!
Microsoft
Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.
Sybase
In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

White Papers & Webcasts

Share our Strength
Download Now  

Managing Secure File Transfer to Save Time, Money and IT Resources
Learn how companies are using innovative technology to overcome these challenges and improve user productivity by offloading e-mail attachments and replacing FTP with...

Security Convergence Equals Network Security Cost Savings
Listen to IBM Internet Security Systems' take on network security convergence.

Disaster Recovery 2008: Reduced Costs and Improved Performance
How long can your Enterprise afford to be without your data? With an accelerated disaster recovery program, you never have to answer this...