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December 18/25, 2000

Spam Attack Hobbles Verizon's E-Mail Service

Telco scrambles to restore full service after the third attack in two weeks

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s many as 70,000 Verizon Communications Inc. business and residential E-mail service subscribers encountered delays lasting up to several hours last week while the telco scrambled to keep service up and restore performance. This latest problem came in the aftermath of the third spam attack against Verizon in two weeks. While Verizon blocked the incoming messages, the backlog of undelivered E-mail crippled the system.

With tens of thousands of junk E-mails clogging Verizon's network, desperate technicians redirected undelivered E-mails to the company's Dallas server, where they were stored to offload the swamped main server. The E-mail was delivered up to 12 hours later during off-peak hours. The Washington Post was among the businesses affected.

On Dec. 8, a Verizon spokesman said the company planned to solve the problem by Dec. 10 by adding servers and redundant firewalls. Nevertheless, Verizon continued to battle the problem through the week, delaying activation of the new equipment and software, including servers to handle additional capacity, until Dec. 16. "We believe we built the system to handle peak traffic within reason," says Alex Coleman, VP and general manager of the Verizon Online service.

Apparently, peak traffic doesn't include the huge volume of E-mails sent to servers during spam attacks. Verizon had initially acknowledged the spam attack but also attributed some of the problem to a threefold-to-fivefold increase in traffic caused by the holiday season; however, it later downplayed that. No other E-mail providers have reported similar problems.

Telcos can't stop spam attacks with a strong defense because there are enough resources on the Internet to easily flood any E-mail system with fake messages, says Tom Nolle, president of technology consulting firm CIMI. "You have to go on the offense and punish the perpetrators first." After that, he says, the Internet community has to agree to do some policing of itself or make the system accountable to public policy.

Coleman wouldn't say if Verizon has any suspects, but he did say perpetrators would be prosecuted. Verizon is also considering compensating customers affected by the problems. Company officials said late last week that 100% of new E-mails were being processed as normal, but many stored messages had yet to be delivered.