http://sns.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-microsoft.story?coll=sns%2Dnewsnation%2Dheadlines

Hackers block access to Microsoft sites The Associated Press

January 25, 2001 6:49 PM CST

REDMOND, Wash. -- Hackers blocked access to several Web sites owned by Microsoft Corp. today, just one day after the software giant corrected an employee's error that caused consumers to be blocked from its sites.

The so-called "denial-of-service attack" occurred Thursday morning, intermittently keeping Web surfers shut out from Microsoft Internet properties such as Microsoft.com and MSN.com, the company said in a statement.

The attack comes a day after the Redmond-based software maker fixed a server glitch that had caused additional problems with its Web sites. Microsoft said the two outages were not related.

A denial-of-service attack occurs when hackers, using automation software, overwhelm a site with so much fake traffic that legitimate Internet users cannot gets through. It's like hundreds of pranksters trying to call a single phone number at once.

Sites can try to mitigate the damage, but can't prevent such an attack. Hackers do not have to break in to a site to launch such an attack, although in many cases they break in to third-party computer systems and launch attacks from there to avoid tracing.

Last February, Yahoo, Amazon.com, CNN, eBay and other major Internet sites were crippled for hours at a time by similar attacks.

Last week, a 16-year-old Montreal boy known as "Mafiaboy" pleaded guilty to 56 charges of mischief in connection with some of those attacks. Ten other charges were dropped.

Microsoft said it had notified the FBI of the attack.

"Someone was probably kicking them when they were down," said Ryan Russell, incident analyst with SecurityFocus.com, which hosts the popular security mailing list Bugtraq.

"It's coincidence in the sense that they are unrelated to each other," he added. "It's not coincidence in the fact that Microsoft is obviously a popular target. If you're going to hack somebody and get some press, Microsoft is as good a target as anything else."

Microsoft has said the earlier problem was caused by a foul up with Microsoft's domain-name servers -- the computer hardware that matches Web surfers with particular addresses on the Internet.

The problem began after a technician reconfigured the network equipment that directs Internet traffic Tuesday evening, the company said. That caused many of Microsoft's sites to be unreachable Tuesday night and Wednesday.

Microsoft's sites are listed third on Media Metrix's Top 50 Digital Media/Web Properties At Home & At Work in the United States. Media Matrix's Web site says Microsoft sites had 53.8 million visitors in December.

Shares of Microsoft fell $1.13 to $61.81 in trading Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market, then fell to $60 in after-hours trading.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), January 25, 2001