One day after Microsoft Corp. announced it had healed a self-inflicted wound that caused millions of users to be blocked from its most popular Web sites, a sophisticated hack attack caused another series of embarrassing crashes for the software giant. The attacks lasted from shortly before 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. PST, and kept the sites closed for more than five hours. FBI Called In According to the company, the Microsoft sites were shut down for much of Tuesday and Wednesday, after a technician incorrectly configured a routing device on the software giant's network. The company speculated that the hackers in the latest incident probably took advantage of the interval during which its Web servers were not operating correctly to uncover security flaws. The strike overwhelmed routers, which control data flowing from the Internet through the company's Web servers.
Outages Resemble DoS DoS attacks are fairly easy to accomplish.
DoS attacks typically overwhelm a Web site by sending thousands of requests for information simultaneously. Microsoft officials steadfastly denied that the problems it experienced Tuesday and Wednesday were the result of hackers, but Daniel Todd of Keynote Systems, which monitors the performance of Web sites, including Microsoft's, told reporters that the three days of disruption were consistent with previous DoS attacks. The FBI was able to monitor that incident, but has yet to track down the culprits. Among the biggest obstacles so far has been convincing potential customers of the safety and reliability of distributed software. Microsoft reportedly has convinced many of the world's largest companies to consider its new .Net strategy, and this week's embarrassments may hurt its chances of winning clients.