Network Solutions restores service after DDoS attack

Network Solutions said Wednesday it has restored services after a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack knocked some websites it hosts offline for a few hours.

The company, which is owned by Web.com, registers domain names, offers hosting services, sells SSL certificates and provides other website-related administration services.

Network Solutions wrote on Facebook around mid-day Wednesday EDT that it was under attack. About three hours later, it said most customer websites should resolve normally.

Some customers commented on Facebook, however, that they were still experiencing downtime. Many suggested a problem with Network Solutions' DNS (Domain Name System) servers, which are used to look up domain names and translate the names into an IP addresses that can be requested by a browser.

DDoS attacks are a favored method to disrupt websites and involve sending large amounts of data in hopes of overwhelming servers and causing websites to not respond to requests.

Focusing DDoS attacks on DNS servers has proven to be a very effective attack method. In early June, three domain name management and hosting providers -- DNSimple, easyDNS and TPP Wholesale -- reported DNS-related outages caused by DDoS attacks.

Hosting service DNSimple said it came under a DNS reflection attack, where DNS queries are sent to one party but the response is directed to another network, exhausting the victim network's bandwidth.

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