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The Details On A Pair Of Amazon D-DOS Crashes, Just One Presidential Term Late

Written by Evan Schuman
July 25th, 2012

Every four years, Americans elect a President, enjoy Leap Year and watch the Olympics. And the last time those things were happening—four years ago—Amazon may not have been perfect at thwarting D-DOS attacks. But even then, it was pretty good at protecting its card data. This comes from federal documents recently unsealed, documents that described three successful D-DOS attacks against Amazon, eBay and Priceline. The first Amazon attack happened on June 6, 2008, at 10:23 AM California time and continued for about four-and-a-half hours, until Amazon fought it off. “During the attack, the bots involved in the attack requested large and resource intensive Web pages on a magnitude of 600 percent to 1,000 percent of normal traffic levels,” according to the newly unsealed federal indictment of a pair of Moscow-based alleged cyberthieves.

Three days later, starting at 10:06 AM California time, the second D-DOS attack against Amazon began. This time, it took Amazon three days to fight it off. The filing also said one of the accused was found with data for more than 28,000 credit cards. But Emily Langlie, a spokesperson with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington, said none of the cards were from Amazon, eBay or Priceline, suggesting the payment-card protections did their job.

Posted in E-Commerce, IT Strategy/Industry, Payment Systems, Security/Fraud
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