Hackers Attack Yahoo!
By TED BRIDIS, AP
WASHINGTON (AP) - Computer vandals using a common type of
electronic attack overwhelmed Yahoo!, the most popular site on the
Internet, and rendered the flagship Web directory inaccessible
Monday for at least several hours.
Yahoo! Inc. spokeswoman Diane Hunt said the company, worth
roughly $93 billion, was the victim of hackers flooding its equipment with repeated electronic requests. The vandals did not
gain access inside its computers, she said.
The technique, called a denial of service attack, is similar to
pranksters repeatedly dialing a company's telephone number to block
all other incoming calls.
The failure drew renewed attention to the risks facing the
fledgling world of electronic commerce, where hackers can shut down
even the largest online stores.
``It basically says nobody is safe, if Yahoo can be taken down
with all the resources behind them,'' said Elias Levy, chief technology officer at San Mateo, Calif.-based
SecurityFocus.Com. Another expert, though, said Yahoo's failure suggested the
company was unprepared for such an attack on its systems. The Yahoo
site is among the most robust on the Internet, delivering an average of 465 million Web pages to consumers each day. ``It's kind of silly it took so long,'' said James M. Atkinson,
president and senior engineer at Granite Island Group, an Internet
security consultant in Massachusetts. ``The fact it went on for
hours indicates a management and infrastructure problem that does
not involve technology. This should have taken them off the map for
15 to 20 minutes, 30 at the most.''
Hunt said technicians determined that a flood of data requests
coming from different computers on the Internet had overwhelmed its
routers, which help direct traffic for the Web site. Technicians ultimately were able to identify the type of data
and filter it out, which restored service.
She declined to say whether Yahoo had contacted the FBI, which
coincidentally warned Web sites last month about a specific type of
denial of service attack. The FBI could not be reached immediately
for comment.
``Our first priority has been identifying what was happening and
then installing the filters to enable our users to access our services,'' Hunt said.
The FBI suffered a similar attack on its own Web site last year.
It made the site inaccessible for days in April 1999 after hackers
overwhelmed its Internet computers also using a denial of service
attack.
In its latest advisory, the FBI's National Infrastructure
Protection Center said it was ``highly concerned about the scale
and significance of these reports,'' and vulnerabilities were ``widespread, well-known and readily accessible on most networked
systems.''
Yahoo said the problems began Monday about 1:45 p.m. EST. The
problem also prevented the company's customers from accessing free
e-mail accounts through the Web site, but it didn't otherwise affect the flow of mail.
The problem also did not affect customers' home pages on
Geocities, which is owned by Yahoo.
Media Metrix, which tracks visitors to Web sites, said
www.yahoo.com was the most popular Internet site for the month of
December, the latest figures available, when it recorded 36 million
visitors.
Monday's attack didn't affect the company's stock. It traded
close to where it had opened at nearly $353. Yahoo's market capitalization
- the value of all its outstanding shares - is roughly $93 billion.
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