Prolexic Saves Critical Internet Sites from Attacks During Holiday Shopping Season

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Dec. 5, 2005 -- With experts predicting U.S. online holiday sales to be approximately $20 billion this year, consumers are not the only ones visiting e-commerce Web sites. Cyber-criminals are attacking high-traffic Web sites by launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Domain Name System (DNS) registries, Internet services that translate domain names into IP addresses.

The "front door" to Web sites, DNS registries allow internet users to connect to their favorite sites through alphabetical domain names rather than numerical IP addresses. By launching a DDoS attack, which occurs when a multitude of compromised systems ("zombies") send a flood of malicious messages against a target, a DNS service provider can be overwhelmed with requests, disrupting -- or even wiping out -- its capability to locate Web sites. A recent attack to several high profile DNS registries and hosting locations impacted more than a half million Web sites. Prolexic Technologies, the world's leading provider of DDoS proof Internet services and security consulting products, is actively protecting customers from the recent flood of large-scale DDoS attacks.

"A continuation or escalation of attacks to unprotected sites could impact consumers' abilities to purchase holiday presents online," says Darren Rennick, CEO of Prolexic Technologies. "This problem is further exacerbated by a still-unpatched flaw in Microsoft Internet Explorer, which allows cyber-criminals to gain complete control of personal computers and use them as zombies to launch larger and more destructive DDoS attacks."

Prolexic Technologies, the leader in DDoS defense, protects DNS providers via its Clean Pipe Circuits. Clean Pipe Circuits absorb and eliminate malicious traffic in the Internet "cloud" keeping the Internet circuits to Prolexic customers clean and DDoS free.

"We've seen attacks escalate sharply the last few months over what they were in previous years," said Mark Jeftovic, CEO of EasyDNS. "To mitigate the threat, we've deployed nameservers to Prolexic's Clean Pipe Circuit service. The nameservers protected by Prolexic have come through several DDoS attacks completely unscathed and with no impact to our service."

About Prolexic

Prolexic Technologies is the worldwide leader in DDoS mitigation services. More companies and service providers entrust their networks to Prolexic for DDoS protection services than any other Internet security company in the world. Leveraging unique filtering techniques, high-speed bandwidth and peering, advanced routing, and other patent-pending devices, Prolexic has created the most powerful DDoS detection and protection system in the world.