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Major financial institutions, airlines & the Hong Kong Stock Exchange were knocked offline by a backfiring distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation service Thurs.
The 1 hour-long outage, which was triggered at roughly 1am EST Thur., is tied to Akamai Technology’s anti-DDoS Prolexic service.
This hour-long service denial hit airlines, banks & the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It is thought to have been caused by a DDoS mitigation service.
In a statement at 7:44a.m. EST, Akamai confirm a segment of its Prolexic platform was impacted & is now back up & running. “We are continuing to validate services. We will share more details of what transpired, but our 1st priority is ensuring all customer impact is mitigated,” wrote Chris Nicholson, Senior PR Manager, Akamai.
Airline Systems
According to reports, airline systems used by Delta, American, Southwest & United suffered outages at around 1am EST. Also impacted were financial institutions including Discover & Navy Federal Credit Union, according to a report by National Public Radio.
Australian based ITNews reported that services believed to rely on Akamai’s Prolexic were knocked temporarily offline.
“Users reported widespread problems accessing a range of internet properties & online services from the likes of CBA, Westpac, ANZ, UBank, AMP Bank, Macquarie Bank, ME Bank & more,” according to ITNews reporter Ry Crozier.
Hong Kong’s Stock Exchange
Mid-day operations of Hong Kong’s Stock Exchange were also impacted by the technical problems.
Virgin Australia also published a statement to its customers attributing an outage it suffered to Akamai’s Prolexic service.
“Virgin Australia was one of many organisations to experience an outage with the Akamai content delivery system today, & we are working with them to ensure that necessary measures are taken to prevent these outages from re-occurring,” the airline commented in a statement.
DDoS Mitigation Service
Advice by Akamai posted to social media advised, “If you face the downtime, kindly turn off/route off Prolexic solution.” Earlier, in a tweet posted at 6:24 a.m. EST on Thur., Akamai stated; “Akamai is aware of the issue & actively working to restore services as soon as possible.”
According to Akamai’s description, Prolexic is a DDoS mitigation service that can fend off “terabit-scale attacks”.
https://www.cybernewsgroup.co.uk/virtual-conference-june-2021/
