AT&T reports DDoS attack on its DNS servers

Enterprise customers report service disruptions

August 16, 2012 | By Sean Buckley

AT&T (NYSE: T) on Wednesday said it suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on its DNS (Domain Name System) servers resulting in service disruptions for a number of its enterprise customers.

The attack on its DNS servers, according to a PC Advisor report, began Wednesday morning, West Coast time, and has disrupted services for a number of AT&T's enterprise customers that use its managed services DNS product.

Worldwide Environmental Products, an enterprise customer that uses the managed services DNS product, said they got its "first report of problems at 6:31 a.m. Pacific time."

AT&T acknowledged the DNS server issue and said it has been working to fix it to ensure there would not be major disruptions to its customers.

"Due to a distributed denial of service attack attempting to flood our Domain Name System servers in two locations, some AT&T business customers experienced intermittent disruptions in service on Wednesday," AT&T said in a prepared statement. "Our network and security teams quickly worked to mitigate the impact and service is currently running normally."