Report on the Denial of Service Attack
August 2008
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INTRODUCTION
During the week of August 1 through August 7, 2008, EZ-NetTools was the victim of a number of Denial of Service (DOS) attacks. A denial of service attack consists of a flood of spurious internet traffic which overwhelm computer resources, making them unavailable. (For more information, go to Wikipedia.) During this week, various services were unavailable at times. There was a two day period of time when all services including web sites and email were not available. During this time our phone system was also sporadically affected by the attack.
These kinds of attacks disrupt service but do not affect data on the computers. Consequently, we have no indication that data on our servers including your web sites and email accounts has been affected or compromised.
The attacks came in two phases which are described below.
FIRST ATTACK
The first series of attacks started August 1, had the greatest impact on our computers. As the attacks occurred we were able to develop counter measures. The attacker responded with modified attacks. As the attack and response cycle progressed we became faster at responding. After a few days this series of attacks stopped. Afterwards, we had nearly two days of calm before the next attack.
SECOND ATTACK
The second attacked started on Tuesday, August 5. This attack was a three pronged attack. While the attack degraded our services, it had are more severe affect on our local ISP and service providers two levels above them. We developed and implemented a counter measure. However, the impact was so severe on our ISP that they shut off our service Wednesday morning to protect their network. Our computer servers were working just fine but they were not connected to the Internet. Over the next 24 hours, we worked with our ISP to develop counter measures. Our services were restored on Thursday morning, August 7. Our services have been available since then, except for a few times when some adjustments had to be made.
PHONE SERVICE AT EZ-NETTOOLS
We use an internet phone service. So initially our phones went dead along with web services and email. However, since phone traffic is small enough we were able to move them to another internet service after an hour or so. However, it took us a while to fine tune all of the configuration options that were affected by the change. Consequently, sometimes people were not able to call in to us.
UPGRADE WE HAVE MADE
Since this attack we have invested a significant amount of money to enhance the resilience of our system. We have installed redundant systems and improved our automated detection and counter measure systems. We do not want to go into too much detail because we have reason to believe that one of our competitors instigated this attack and actually has access to inside information about our system.
SUMMARY
We are very, very sorry for the impact this attack had on your web site and your email. We understand because we are completely dependent on the internet for our business too. We are sorry and we are going to fix the problem.
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