DDOS Provider In New Alliance
Published: Friday, April 08, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
DDOS PROVIDER IN NEW ALLIANCE
Prolexic teams up with Telecity in European
partnership
The highly experienced and effective US anti-Distributed Denial
of Service provider Prolexic, has extended its commercial reach into the European
market by joining in a deal with TeleCity, a provider of managed data centre services.
TeleCity will be Prolexic’s European host location, providing a
secure environment for its IT infrastructure. Prolexic reports that its infrastructure
is already live in TeleCity, with several leading online gambling, including Sporting
Index, and foreign exchange organisations using the service.
The collaboration
enables the company to address the UK’s escalating DDoS problems. The UK
has traditionally been targeted by organised crime syndicates due to the size
of its online gambling sector and its proximity to Eastern Europe, a region where
many of the attacks originate. DDoS attacks are co-ordinated by cyber criminals,
who place malicious viruses onto computers of unsuspecting broadband users. When
the attack is triggered, these infected or “zombie” computers, become
controlled by the criminals and simultaneously ‘flood’ a network with
fake packets, preventing legitimate traffic from accessing a system.
The
results of an attack include web site downtime, the inability to take and process
orders, damaged customer loyalty and, in the worst-case scenario, bankruptcy.
According to a recent study by Aberdeen Group, an internet-based attack
can cost a business on average $2 million in revenue per incident.
Barrett
Lyon, CTO of Prolexic and an individual famous for his undercover work in busting
recent Russian criminal networks said: “Cyber terrorists are now utilising
up to 75,000 zombie computers in one attack, which means that DDoS attacks can
exceed 1 gigabyte in bandwidth. This is a problem for routers and firewalls, as
they are unable to respond to a dynamic attack which may grow in size and complexity.
Therefore, as attacks become more sophisticated, the limitations of traditional
security measures are exposed, especially as we are seeing attacks that target
multiple network layers simultaneously and more effectively mask their source.”
Hugo Smith, IT director at Sporting Index Limited, said: “The issue of
DDoS has been well documented and we were no exception to the rule – like
many organisations we were receiving threats and being attacked. Unfortunately,
our ISP was unable to provide us with the level of protection our business required.
This led us to Prolexic, who were able to install a robust solution in a matter
of hours. Since then, Prolexic technology has successfully repelled a number of
attacks, so that our business can continue as normal.”
TeleCity has
decided to introduce the service following demands from customers for greater
protection against increasing malicious activity on the internet. TeleCity’s
Managed Security Service already provides customers’ networks protection
against unauthorised access, viruses and worms, but new and sophisticated threats
such as DDoS pose serious implications for businesses if not tackled effectively.
Prolexic directs customer traffic through its data centres and then using its
own patented technology cleans it up and re-routes it back to the client. It provides
intrusion protection and network monitoring to both enterprises and Service Providers:
Andy Horn, managing director TeleCity UK, commented: “After the successful
take up of our managed security service, our customers now see TeleCity as a key
part of their network security strategy and expect us to continually provide solutions
which address the online threats to their businesses."
Lyon concluded:
“There are already over ten customers being protected by the Prolexic infrastructure
at TeleCity. We felt the time was right to establish a formal presence in Europe
as the region is undoubtedly suffering from a higher level of extortion compared
to other parts of the world.”
DDoS gained notoriety as a vehicle
for cyber criminals in 2001 when eBay, Microsoft and Amazon were attacked, resulting
in $1 billion in damages and lost business. Thereafter, denial of service attacks
have grown in frequency, size and sophistication, and are now estimated by the
University of California to number 4,000 per week worldwide. Advancements in P2P
networking, greater bandwidth availability and the convergence of wireless and
webTV are only fuelling the frequency of DDoS attacks.
According to the
FBI, Denial of Service has now become the most costly form of cyber crime businesses
face today.
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