Attack was targeted, says Akamai

Akamai Technologies has said that it was the victim of a sophisticated, large-scale attack aimed at specific customer websites. The company backed away from earlier statements that it was caught up in a broad attack on the internet infrastructure, and said that the company's DNS (domain name system) service was attacked for two hours, affecting about 4% of its customers. Akamai is working with US federal law enforcement to investigate the attack. Monitoring systems at the company quickly detected the attack and the company's staff worked with customers and network providers to shut off the source of the attack.

Web monitoring firm Keynote Systems estimated that access to some sites was diminished by as much as 80% during the attack.

Less than 1% of Akamai customers experienced disruptions affecting more than 20% of their users, Akamai said.

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