Microsoft Problems :-(

[Klinkefus, David S]

It is nice to see that this
type of thing happens to the big boys too!
Dave K.
MEC

Microsoft Web sites suffer large-scale blackout
By Joris Evers 
  

MICROSOFT CONFIRMED WEDNESDAY that most of its online properties became
unreachable Wednesday morning due to a problem in the system that maps Web
addresses to IP addresses.

Sites hit include the Web-based e-mail service Hotmail.com, Web portal
MSN.com, news Web site MSNBC.com, and the company's corporate site
Microsoft.com.

"The Internet's Domain Name System [DNS] does not return the correct
response when it is queried for a Microsoft Web site," said Ruud de Jonge,
support manager at Microsoft Benelux.

The first reports of the problem started coming in "very early" Wednesday
morning, De Jonge said. It is unclear when the sites will be available
again. 

"It will take some time; this can't be restored by hitting one switch," De
Jonge said.

Microsoft has yet to pin down the cause of the DNS error. 

"It can be a system or human error, but somebody could also have done this
intentionally," De Jonge said. "We don't manage the DNS ourselves; it is a
system controlled by ICANN [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers] with worldwide replicas."

A team at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., is working on the
problem, which has been given top priority, De Jonge said.

Because of the blackout, some 60 million Hotmail users worldwide can't
access their e-mail; Microsoft customers can't download software updates or
get online support; and MSNBC.com has no audience. Other services that can't
be reached include Windowsupdate.com, which contains updates for the Windows
operating system; Passport.com, Microsoft's online identification service;
and bCentral.com, a portal for small and medium-size businesses.

Hackers could be responsible for the outage, which has continued for hours
now, said Simon Hania, spokesman for Dutch Internet service provider XS4ALL
Internet BV. 

"The name server that is authoritative for Microsoft's Web sites might have
crippled under a denial-of-service attack," Hania said.

However, it is more likely that a network error or system failure caused the
problem, according to Hania.

The DNS consists of many machines around the world set up in a hierarchy. 

"It looks like the machine hit is in the top of the DNS tree," Hania said.
"Once it is fixed, it can take a couple of hours for all DNS systems around
the world to pick up the correct DNS information."

Joris Evers is an Amsterdam correspondent for the IDG News Service, an
InfoWorld affiliate.