If you noticed problems with the OAS websites' performance last weekend, this announcement from PowWeb may offer an explanation of sorts:
Over the weekend, PowWeb servers became the target of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. DDoS attacks are malicious attempts to interrupt Internet services by intentionally "flooding" and overwhelming providers with bogus data. Once the volume of this data exceeds an architecture's capacity, systems can no longer perform their tasks and performance issues occur.
While our hosting platform is designed to withstand such attacks, many customers experienced a service degradation, and in some cases, an interruption in services altogether. Thank you for your patience while we worked to combat the attack and bring all services back to normal as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, DDoS attacks are not uncommon, and Internet criminals are constantly discovering new ways to disrupt services. Please be assured that we are working with federal authorities to identify those responsible for the attack and prevent any type of future disruption. If you'd like to learn more, Google "DDoS attacks" or "DNS storms."
- 09/04/07 at 11:40 EDT