Monday February 7 9:15 PM ET Yahoo Site Suffers Three-Hour Outage

By Andrea Orr

PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - The popular Internet portal Yahoo Inc. (NasdaqNM:YHOO - news) suffered a three-hour outage on Monday, apparently the result of sabotage, that forced millions of the company's regular users to turn to rival sites to access news and information.

The crash is the worst in the history of the company which has a nearly flawless track record. Although other popular Internet services like America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) and eBay Inc. (NasdaqNM:EBAY - news) had similar, or worse problems as they embarked on a rapid growth course, Yahoo was widely believed to be at a more mature stage in its development.

A spokeswoman for Yahoo said that the outage was caused by what appeared to be a planned attack by someone bombarding its servers with fake traffic, that ``prevented real users from accessing requested information.''

The company stopped short of calling the incident a hacker attack, since it said that no one had actually intruded into its systems. It said none of its internal data had been compromised.

Although Yahoo described the outage as ``intermittent,'' users who tried repeatedly to access the site said it appeared to be down consistently.

``For the first 15 minutes (of the outage), we were able to get onto the site about half the times we tried,'' said Dan Todd, director of public services at Keynote Systems Inc. (NasdaqNM:KEYN - news), a company that monitors Web site performance and reliability.

``But since that time, we got a success rate of less than two percent. To me that's not quite intermittent.''

It was not immediately clear what impact the outage would have on the company's revenues and customer loyalty, although industry analysts noted that Yahoo has become one of the main fixtures of the Internet that many customers do not just surf casually, but depend on in the course of their work days.

``It would be one thing if they were just an Internet search engine,'' said Jupiter Communications analyst Cormac Foster. ''But they provide a lot of mission-critical services like calendars.''

In an effort to distinguish itself from its rivals, Yahoo, and most other Internet portals, have phased in more customized services like online calendaring, where people can go to keep a complete schedule of their appointments. The benefit of such services is that they build viewer loyalty by storing personal data the user can only access by returning to the site. But if service is not reliable, it could have the reverse effect.

Similarly, analysts expect companies that advertise on Yahoo will require some kind of compensation for the outage. Yahoo is the most visited portal on the Internet and every day delivers an average of 465 million pages, many which contain banner ads or some other kind of promotion.

``Some of the advertisers will scream and yell and demand their money back, and others will ask for free impressions in the future,'' said Clay Ryder, vice president and chief analyst at Zona Research in Redwood City, Calif. In addition to this cost of ``hard money,'' he said the outage could also cost the company ``soft money'' in the loss of goodwill that could send some advertisers and customers to rival sites.

However, none of Yahoo's big competitors were claiming victory on Monday. Rather, the fact that an established business like Yahoo could be so vulnerable to an outside attack seemed to sweep through the industry as a sobering reminder of the hazards and unknowns still facing all Web sites.

If Yahoo can assure customers it can prevent such a future attack, analysts believe most of Yahoo's customers and advertisers will eventually be forgiving. When the auction site eBay suffered a 22-hour outage over the summer, it had to spend heavily to compensate customers and beef up its infrastructure. But the company managed to continue to increase its user base and has seen little or no long-term impact from those problems.

On Monday, however, Yahoo was giving no such assurance that the outage would be a one-time event. ``We never say it can't happen again,'' Yahoo President Jeff Mallet said in an interview on CNBC. ``But we do have our backup sites ready to go.''

========================================== End

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), February 07, 2000

Answers

Feb 7, 2000 - 08:35 PM

Yahoo! Suffers Attack From Hackers, Overwhelms Popular Site

By Ted Bridis
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Computer vandals using a common electronic attack overwhelmed Yahoo!, the most popular site on the Internet, and rendered the flagship Web directory inaccessible much of Monday.

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.

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 said she was unaware whether the company had contacted the FBI, which coincidentally warned Web sites last month about a specific type of denial of service attack.

"Our first priority has been identifying what was happening and then installing the filters to enable our users to access our services," Hunt said.

In its advisory, the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center said it was "highly concerned about the scale and significance of these reports" and said 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.

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), February 07, 2000.

Thanks Ray, but old news here. See:

OT (maybe): Anyone else notice that most of Yahoo has been down for the last couple of hours?

and here:

Yahoo! site down for several hours today

That's why I love this site. If it's news, it don't take long to get here! <:)=

-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), February 07, 2000.

Maybe Yahoo is telling the truth about todays web site crash. Maybe I'm just skeptical because of all the lies told by corporate hacks but..isn't a hacker attack a little too pat an answer to the Yahoo site failure today? The Reuters News site also went down during the same time frame. "Blame it on an external enemy" is a common propaganda ploy. It is one of the most common forms of disinformation/distraction from government and corporate failures. It would be a great way to distract attention away from a technology failure which could have serious financial consequences....Do you think Yahoo would admit a major technology failure that caused their site to crash? Or is it more convenient and less damaging to their image to blame the problem on hackers....

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 08, 2000.

Carl, only time will tell. BTW, thank you for your posts. The only way we can ascertain what is really happening is by careful observation of news events and even antedotal information. You contribrute to that effort tremendously by posting the news items that you find. I, for one, look forward to them and appreciate your hard work.

-- George (George10@webtv.net), February 08, 2000.

I guess we know where LL is hanging out nowadays.

-- mommacarestx (nospam@thanks.com), February 08, 2000.