Was it an Internet infrastructure attack?

June 18, 2004

By Walt Zwirko
WFAA-TV Dallas, Texas

Computer Corner is a weekly video report examining the latest trends in technology. Helpful links are listed. Walt Zwirko reports from Dallas.

Tuesday morning as I was going about my work, something funny seemed to be happening. I wasn't able to contact some of the Web sites I depend on for information and research.

Just before 9 a.m., I sent a note to my colleagues asking if they'd had any trouble reaching Yahoo , Google, and other popular Internet destinations.

It turns out that I wasn't the only one having difficulties.

Trouble started brewing for those sites and others – including Microsoft and FedEx – about 7:45 Tuesday morning, according to Keynote Systems Inc., a company that monitors the health of the World Wide Web.

Keynote said the difficulties lasted about two hours and seemed to be related to some kind of a cyber attack on Akamai – a service used by many large Web sites to speed content delivery by decentralizing its distribution over a network of many computers around the world.

Akamai spokesman Jeff Young told the Associated Press that this was a "large scale, international attack on Internet infrastructure." The company said it was cooperating with the FBI and other government agencies investigating the attack.

The Department of Homeland Security has declined to comment, even though this outage potentially affected millions of users.

As I write this update – now nearly 40 hours after I began losing contact with Yahoo and Google – the National Cyber Alert System Web site still offers no explanation for the incident.

It doesn't even report or acknowledge that it happened.

America's huge online community deserves to have a fast, accurate and official response when things don't seem to be working right. The more people who know about problems as they develop, the more likely it is that those problems can be identified and quickly isolated.

Saluting a Web pioneer

Have you ever heard of Tim Berners-Lee? He is, quite literally, the guy who invented the way most folks use the Internet.

Berners-Lee figured out that documents and data on one computer can be hyperlinked to documents on any computer linked to the global network. He developed the first browser (which he called WorldWideWeb) in 1990, and computer users started taking notice within months..

While it's now difficult to imagine using a keyboard without Internet access, the development by Berners-Lee – which he permitted to be freely distributed – was just getting started a dozen years ago.

On Wednesday, in Helsinki, Finland, Berners-Lee received $1.2 million as recipient of the first Millennium Technology Prize.

The modest scientist, now 49, said the Web would never have succeeded if he had charged money for his developments.

"All sorts of things, too long for me to list here, are still out there waiting to be done," Berners-Lee said in accepting the award. "There are so many new things to make, limited only by our imagination. And I think it's important for anybody who's going through school or college wondering what to do, to remember that now."

Wireless rest stops: free or not?

Let me clarify a story we first discussed last week. It had to do with the Texas Department of Transportation's plan to establish wireless Wi-Fi Internet access at all 84 of its safety rest stops around the state.

In that report, I called it a "free" service, based upon information contained in an official news release dated May 26 titled, Statewide Internet 'Hotspots' Proposed by TxDOT.

The release quoted Andy Keith, the man in charge of the state's rest areas, as saying this: "Knowing free Internet service is available at our rest areas will get drivers to make regular stops."

One of our eagle-eyed viewers, Derek Minahan of Richardson, wrote in to advise me that while Texas motorists may soon indeed encounter Internet access at rest stops across the state, they may have to pay for it after all.

Derek pointed out that in the official document seeking bids for the wireless service, it states: "This service will be provided at a cost to the consumer... not to TxDOT."

Don't get me wrong; it will be a boon to have the Internet service available at rest stops across Texas. But this story initially got a lot of notice because the State of Texas said it was going to offer free access to weary motorists.

It's a promise that should be kept.