Security Incidents mailing list archives

Re: Strange pings from akamai? {1-112POX}


From: Glenn Forbes Fleming Larratt <glratt () io com>
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2002 13:21:24 -0500 (CDT)

Hi Kevin,

        Since the scope of your research on "internet connectivity"
        includes the entire readership of this list, it seems
        appropriate that the URL for voluntary exclusion should be
        made similarly public.  

        I for one regard my (university, though I may not name it
        here) network, particularly the internal paths thereof , as a
        "fair use" offering through my Internet border, and not a
        "public domain" one (the analogy is not precise, hence the
        quotes); I provide all the necessary information, by way of
        DNS and BGP, for anyone outside to get in as they have need.  

        I have no interest in Akamai, Microsoft (who's done this as
        well), or anyone else mapping my internal network for market
        research or any other purposes.

        Please provide the URL in question at your convenience.

-- 
Glenn Forbes Fleming Larratt         The Lab Ratt (not briggs :-) 
glratt () io com                        http://www.io.com/~glratt  
There are imaginary bugs to chase in heaven.



On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Customer Care at Akamai wrote:

Hi Jeff,

This is Kevin from Customer Care at Akamai Technologies.  I noticed your
email to this list and wanted to respond to your message.

Akamai Technologies is a content delivery company that serves HTTP and
streaming content for many of the most popular Internet web-sites. Akamai's
network consists of 12,900+ servers in over 1000 networks across 66
countries. Our patented "intelligent" algorithms dynamically map a user
request to the closest (network-wise) available Akamai server. 

Our company sometimes does some research on internet connectivity using
pings.  The goal of our research is to improve download times for end users.
We use standard pings and take measures to ensure there is no risk of a ping
flood attack.  The ping activity is intended to try to triangulate the
location of nameservers with respect to our datacenters in order to provide
end users with better performance when they download web pages which are
being carried on the Akamai network.  

We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.  I will send you a
separate email with a custom URL for you to enter your IP address should you
wish to be excluded from our testing.

I hope this information helps.

- Kevin
-------------------------------------
Customer Care 
Akamai Technologies
ccare () akamai com

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Kell [mailto:jeff-kell () utc edu]
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 11:34 PM
To: Incidents
Subject: Strange pings from akamai?


Out of the wild blue, I logged some unexpected pings:

209.92.223.82:0(209-92-223-82.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com) ICMP Ping

Now I know they do lots of click-thru and banner ads, but is Akamai now
starting to keep tabs on our online time?  or something more sinister?

This was logged on my home computer firewall, I wasn't even here.  I
don't bother with logging pings at the office so I don't know if this 
is widespread or I just happened to be singled out for some reason.

Anyone else seen this?

Jeff

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service.
For more information on this free incident handling, management 
and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service.
For more information on this free incident handling, management 
and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com






----------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service.
For more information on this free incident handling, management 
and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com


Current thread: