Graphs showing attack traffic to three of the retailers from November 27th through December 4th
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Cloud optimization services provider provider Akamai Technologies (www.akamai.com) reported on Monday it has helped protect several leading retailers from distributed denial of service attacks during the three-day period following Cyber Monday.
In addition to several standalone attacks, Akamai observed high volumes of coordinated attacks against five independent Internet retailer top 500 customers from November 30th through December 2nd.
The highly distributed attacks caused some of the websites to see traffic spikes of up to 10,000 times their normal daily traffic.
Akamai says it was able to help these retailers sustain the attacks and allow them to stay in business during some of the busiest shopping days of the year.
The company’s security offerings, which include Web application firewall, enhanced DNS, SiteShield and global traffic management, help customers strengthen their infrastructure against attacks like these.
Industry estimates show that 2010 holiday sales will represent nearly 24 percent of an average retailer’s total online sales.
Akamai estimates the attacks could have potentially cost the five retailers over $15 million in lost revenue during the three-day period.
“These attacks were clearly deliberate and aimed to hit retailers when it hurts the most,” says Pedro Santos, chief strategist of commerce at Akamai. “Additionally, it is one of the few times we have seen a coordinated attack across multiple independent retailers, which speaks to the value of leveraging a globally distributed platform for security services. Even with five of our customers being simultaneously attacked, Akamai was able to ensure seamless performance without disruption.”
The majority of attack traffic against the five retailers stemmed from distributed IP addresses out of Thailand, Mexico, Philippines, and Brazil.
These attacks reached peaks of up to 14 Gbps, with some websites experiencing up to 10,000 times above normal daily traffic.
Although the three retailers showed varying traffic levels, they all shared the same start and stop dates and peaks and valleys in page views per second.
The company has more than 77,000 servers in 1,000 networks operating in 70 countries around the world.
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