Web outage blamed on zombies

Akamai has blamed a 'bot net' of zombified PCs for the Internet downtime that affected sites such as Yahoo this week. The attack that blacked out Google, Yahoo and other major Web sites earlier this week involved the use of a "bot net" -- a large network of zombified home PCs -- Internet infrastructure provider Akamai Technologies said Wednesday. The attack, which blocked nearly all access to Apple Computer, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo's Web sites for two hours on Tuesday, took aim at the key domain name system (DNS) servers run by Akamai.

These servers translate word-based URLs, such as www.microsoft.com, into the numerical addresses used by the Internet. Using compromised home computers, the attackers sent a flood of data to the DNS servers, preventing them from providing that translation and effectively shutting surfers out of the four companies' pages, according to Akamai.

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