Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Akamai Kicked Journalist Brian Krebs' Site Off Its Servers After He Was Hit By a Record Cyberattack (businessinsider.com)

Posted by msmash on from the pushing-the-limits dept.

An anonymous reader writes:Cloud hosting giant Akamai Technologies has dumped journalist Brian Krebs from its servers after his website came under a "record" cyberattack. "It's looking likely that KrebsOnSecurity will be offline for a while," Krebs tweeted Thursday. "Akamai's kicking me off their network tonight." Since Tuesday, Krebs' site has been under sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), a crude method of flooding a website with traffic in order to deny legitimate users from being able to access it. The assault has flooded Krebs' site with more than 620 Gbps per second of traffic -- nearly double what Akamai has seen in the past.

8 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. So basically ... the attack wins? by DavidRawling · · Score: 5, Informative

    Seems to me the attackers win, at least in the short term, because the caching and CDN provider (who I expect was probably contracted and paid, although it's entirely up to Brian how he handles his business affairs, it does seem likely) takes the site off the air anyway. That being the case ... what's the point of having that contracted relationship, if they dump you anyway?

    1. Re: So basically ... the attack wins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Akamai were providing him service for free up to that point:

      https://twitter.com/briankrebs/status/779111614226239488

      So up to this point they had been eating the cost of hosting him and defending against attacks. This one just got too big for too long.

    2. Re:So basically ... the attack wins? by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The reason is irrelevant. The message is clear: You want to silence your opposition? Conduct a DDoS until your enemy's hoster decides that you're more hassle than he is worth.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    3. Re: So basically ... the attack wins? by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They weren't hosting him for free, there's no such thing as free.

      They were hosting him because it was good PR for them to be able to say "Yeah, we're capable of holding up this high value target's website just fine regardless of all the attacks he regularly comes under".

      This is a tacit admittance that Akamai's business model has changed from high end bulletproof host to just another host that will not keep your site up in the face of a DDOS. This is rather unfortunate for them, because such low end hosts are widely available, and at a far lower price point.

      I wish them luck with their new model as just another host chasing the low hanging fruit. They've sacrificed an incredibly important unique selling point for them - their reputation as a host that will keep you going no matter what.

    4. Re:So basically ... the attack wins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Before using terms like "shamefully", you really should know all the facts...

      Before everyone beats up on Akamai/Prolexic too much, they were providing me service pro bono. So, as I said, I don't fault them at all.

      — briankrebs (@briankrebs) September 23, 2016

  2. Pro Bono by hodagacz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't blame Akamai at all and it sounds like Krebs doesn't either. There were a ridiculous amount of resources used on the attack and that shit gets expensive to block.

  3. Re: 620 Gbps per second by Sneeka2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yup. Twice the redundancy per second per second.

    --
    Bitten Apples are still better than dirty Windows...
  4. Idiots by edibobb · · Score: 5, Informative

    Akamai is throwing away a great marketing opportunity and turning it into a huge negative. Why would I move to Akamai, knowing that they'll kick me off their network if I ever have trouble? They're throwing away their primary competitive advantage with one stupid decision.