Cookies, Single Sign-On, and You

What's the problem? As part of a concerted effort to protect end user privacy and increase browser security, major web browsers have been making changes to their treatment of 3rd party cookies. These changes are designed to cripple ad targeting services that track user behavior online and rely on...

DNS Flag Day & Akamai

Written by Jon Reed & Barry Greene DNS Flag Day is an industry event that promotes the adoption of the most up-to-date DNS features and ensures that non-standards-compliant servers don't negatively impact the global performance of the Internet. The 2019 DNS Flag Day will remove a number of...

Zero Trust Security Architectures - Software Defined Perimeter

By Jano van Deventer and Andrew Terranova This is Part 3 of a 5 part blog series. Jump to Part 1: Introduction Jump to Part 2: Network Micro-Segmentation Jump to Part 4: Identity Aware Proxy Jump to Part 5: Akamai's Approach to Zero Trust Introduction In the first part of this blog series, we...

On Cache Poisoning

In March 2017, Akamai released a post, "On Web Cache Deception Attacks". A presentation at the Black Hat conference by James Kettle from Port Swigger on web cache poisoning has recently raised awareness of cache poisoning. This is a class of vulnerability with a long history. Cache poisoning can ...

Cybersecurity Executive Order 13800: More than a Risk Assessment?

Written by Sr. Solutions Engineer, Micah Maryn. Most folks around the Washington DC beltway have heard the cybersecurity Executive Order EO 13800 - Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure referred to as a simple risk assessment. But the reality is that it i...

AnswerX - Akamai's 'Secret' DNS Platform

As I work with Operators all over the world, I'm amazed at two worrying. First, Operators are still treating DNS as an afterthought. Everyone knows that if DNS is down, the network is down. Too many people are taking DNS's resiliency for granted. DNS "just works" is assumed to be norm until it do...

As the 2020 Holiday Season Approaches, Optimized Digital Experiences Are Vital for Retailers

This article originally appeared in Digital Commerce 360. The most effective digital retail will happen in step with everyday life. Retailers must invest in tools and infrastructure needed to balance consumer expectations with regulatory responsibilities -- and focus on serving customers. Overall...

Simplifying Security Configuration: A UX Revamp Retrospective

With the March 2019 Release update, the Security Configuration User Interface UI evolution is now complete, and we hope it integrates more seamlessly into your online business. Over time, Akamai has added new products, features, and functionality to its security solutions to protect your web...

DataStream - The Real World Benefits of Real time Logging

Beijing Summer Olympics, 2008 - I remember the butterflies in my stomach as I saw Michael Phelps touch the wall to win his 7th gold at 100m butterfly. It was a record time of 50.58 but everyone was biting their nails because the difference between winning and losing here was only a hundredth of a...

3 Reasons Your Business Needs Security at the Edge

As a security professional, no one knows better than you that the attack surface is shifting and continues to expand across an ever-widening area. Our interconnected digital lives are wreaking havoc with the idea of "the perimeter." As digital attacks continue to grow in size and volume, and are...

Managing Thousands of users in Hundreds of branches with a few clicks

We live in a global business world. Almost on a daily basis, we see organizations expanding rapidly across geographies. While businesses in every industry can have international sites, some verticals like banking, finance, education, and retail are more apt to have corporate offices in multiple...

Part 1: Reading SPAM for Research

I recently wrote an article for Information Security Magazine where I explained how internet security researchers could use their spam folders as a resource tool. It got me thinking about going into greater detail on what I've found in my inbox. Phishing Sites I noticed an increase in "free gift...

Architectural paths for evolving the DNS

The Domain Name System DNS is one of the Internet's fundamental systems, providing the top-level hierarchy for naming Internet resources. One of its purposes is to act as a sort of phonebook, allowing names such as "www.example.com" to be resolved to resource information, such as server IP...

How's that Security Back Door Doing? (Part 2)

In the first part of this blog post I wrote about how recursive DNS rDNS is an attack surface that many enterprises don't currently protect. Bad actors are exploiting that fact and developing advanced targeted threats that use DNS to bypass conventional security tools such as firewalls, secure we...

Climbing the Ladder: Zero Trust, Single Sign-On, Multiple Applications

It is understood that there is a significant amount of complexity to securing today's enterprise, especially as more services and applications move to the cloud and a Zero Trust security model is employed. We at Akamai are actively engaged in helping enterprises adjust to a Zero Trust security...

Girls Who Code: That's a Wrap!

The Summer Immersion Program for Girls Who Code at Akamai wrapped up this past week. The girls finished their final projects and presented them at a graduation ceremony attended by friends and family as well as supporters and mentors from Akamai. The girls were divided into five teams for their...

The WireX Botnet: An example of cross-organizational cooperation

Introduction On August 17th, 2017, multiple Content Delivery Networks CDNs and content providers were subject to significant attacks from a botnet dubbed WireX. The botnet is named for an anagram for one of the delimiter strings in its command and control protocol. The WireX botnet comprises...

As Predicted, Mobile Continued eCommerce Dominance Over the Holiday Weekend

Akamai predicted in September 2018 that mobile shopping would continue its growth this holiday shopping season. That prediction held true as we saw mobile devices increase their share of Black Friday online shopping traffic volume to 57.55%, with desktop traffic dropping to 35.91%. And for the...

Get the message: Your shopper data is trying to tell you something

This article originally appeared in Internet Retailer As we head into the thick of the holiday shopping season, web teams must make sure the path from discovery to purchase is as easy and painless as possible. Knowing where potential fail points are ahead of time makes it easier to prepare, while...

Don't Risk Getting Caught by Kr3pto Phishing Kits

Akamai's threat research team recently published a report showing that a new phishing toolkit named Kr3pto was targeting UK banking customers. A phishing kit is an all-in-one software package that lets just about anyone create and launch phishing attacks designed to steal user data by posing as a...

The evolution of MFA authentication technology and what needs to change next

Authentication attacks are big business, and no one is immune from them. In fact, two men were recently arrested and charged in the Twitter employee account compromise that happened in July 2020. Using employee account credentials, the attackers took over several highly visible celebrity Twitter...

Client Side Threats & How Could Website Owners Mitigate Them?

Have you ever browsed a website with complete confidence that your data is protected? We tend to trust websites with some of our most valuable assets, such as personal information or credit card data. While owners of these websites might consider the protection of our data a top priority, we stil...

Prevent Access to Unauthorized Viewers with Enhanced Proxy Detection

Background: Geo-Blocking Content There are no hard and fast rules to the way content is licensed throughout the world, but typically content owners develop license agreements at the country level which gives them a fair amount of flexibility when monetizing their content. These license agreements...

The Dark Side of APIs: Part 1, API Overview

Ryan Barnett, Principal Security Researcher, Akamai Elad Shuster, Senior Security Researcher, Akamai API Overview Application Programming Interfaces API are a software design approach which enables software and system developers to integrate with other systems based on a defined set of...

The days of VPNs are numbered

We have been talking about how it's time to re-evaluate giving full access to the corporate network for some time. In fact, Akamai's Sr. Director of Enterprise Security & Infrastructure Engineering talks about one of his core goals--No VPN--here. Over the last few days, I am sure many teams who a...

UPX Packed Headaches

Researching malware has many challenges. One of those challenges is obfuscated code and intentionally corrupted binaries. To address challenges like this, we've written a small tool in C that could fix intentionally corrupted binaries automatically. We also plan to open-source the project so othe...

Mobile Window Shopping Climbs, But Sites Are Still Failing Users

This Diwali we saw mobile usage increase 24% over 2018, at the expense of desktop and tablet devices, as mobile shoppers continued to research before buying, even while in a store. At the same time, bounce rates increased, which means shoppers were likely dissatisfied with their experience and...

Firefox DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and Enterprise Threat Protector

Recursive DNS communications are normally unencrypted between a client and a resolver. In an effort to improve user privacy and address security concerns, Mozilla announced it would begin enabling DNS over HTTPS DoH by default in its Firefox browser. However, Mozilla recognized it would be...

Understanding CCPA: It's Time to Action a Plan for Compliance

Notice to all procrastinators: The final countdown to the California Consumer Privacy Act CCPA has begun. On January 1, 2020, companies or organizations that do business in California will be required to comply with the state's strict new privacy legislation that establishes a legal and enforceab...

A Look Back At The DDoS Trends of 2018

As mentioned in the 2018 Year in Review State of the Internet / Security report, trends in DDoS are remarkably stable. The size of the largest attacks have grown by approximately 6% on an annual basis, with occasional outliers like the Mirai botnet. The median size of attacks has been much more...

API Gateway -- Secure API Traffic with OAuth 2.0 and Cache GraphQL Responses

APIs are the connective tissue between software and modern digital experiences, and they must be exposed to consumers in a way that prevents misuse. This means your APIs must have appropriate governance authorization, authentication, quota management policies to prevent consumers from abusing API...

Let's Get Visual: Best Practices for Digital Image Management

"Offering rich, interactive images has emerged as a critical component to any website or web app visitor engagement strategy -- and with good reason," wrote Parag Pathak, our Senior Product Marketing Manager, in his recent published article - Let's get visual: best practices for digital image...

Have Web Trust Issues? Bot Management Can Help

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Massive Campaign Targeting UK Banks Bypassing 2FA

On 14 July, 2020, Oliver Hough, a security researcher from Cyjax, published a report centered on a phishing campaign targeting banking customers in the United Kingdom, which evades two-factor authentication 2FA...

Amazon Prime Day is Now a Major Holiday, Driving up Traffic by More Than 14% in the U.S.

For the just-completed Amazon Prime Day a full 48 hours this year, published reports indicate that it was the largest shopping event in Amazon's history, exceeding their own 2018 sales for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. And this year, there were more than 250 other retailers that...

Three tips to prepare for peak traffic

Peak shopping season is just around the corner. Is your website prepared? Some websites slow down, and others simply crash, driving users and revenue away. Your website needs to accommodate a multitude of devices that will be accessing it, along with the potential for malicious attacks such as Bo...

Akamai's Leading Role in the DNS Renaissance

In case you haven't been paying attention, an unlikely technology, the Internet's Domain Name System, or DNS, is experiencing a renaissance. For much of its existence, DNS has maintained a simple and singular function - to resolve Internet names to IP addresses. Over the past several years,...

WireX update: UDP attack capabilities

Akamai would like to acknowledge the research by F5 containing additional information on the capabilities of this malware, released September 2nd. Finding new features The WireX botnet was discovered due to its role in a series of prolonged attacks against several organizations. It was brought to...

Zero Trust: Not As Scary As It Sounds

If the term Zero Trust has been popping up in your news feed with astonishing frequency lately, you may be tempted to think that Zero Trust must be a brand-new technology cooked up in a research lab at MIT and powered by the latest artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing, and...

Smart DNS for the New Network Edge: Emerging Requirements for DNS Encryption

This blog post -- the fourth in a series -- will discuss how smart DNS resolvers can enhance ongoing ISP and MNO network transformation efforts, such as the transition to 5G, better integration of Wi-Fi, and new network designs that optimize the edge to improve service delivery and network...

The Benefits of a Single Provider DNS Platform

I've written in previous blogs about the value of using DNS as a security control point and how using a DNS based security solution like Akamai's Enterprise Threat Protector can help accelerate your transition to a Zero Trust security approach. In this blog, I'm going to cover how in addition to...

Beware of Fall Phishing Season

A recent blog post by LinkedIn says there are more available job postings listed in October than any other month. Since 89% of the hiring managers who spoke to LinkedIn said it takes less than four weeks to fill those roles, there is a limited window of opportunity - for both job seekers and...

CHAPTER 3: ELECTION DAY - BEST PRACTICES AND READINESS CHECKLIST FOR DIGITAL NEWS PUBLISHERS

CHAPTER 3: ELECTION DAY - BEST PRACTICES AND READINESS FOR DIGITAL NEWS PUBLISHERS As the 2019 General Election results approach, the frenzy and anticipation continue to build. Digital news publishers have the opportunity to engage with audiences on their digital properties as users go online to...

Beyond the Looking Glass - The OTT Evolution in India

India, while at the cusp of becoming a digital, mobile first country, is also in the middle of evolving content consumption patterns. Hotstar's India Watch Report states that the video consumption in the country has seen a five-fold growth in just one year, with most of this growth is fuelled by...

DNS: Exfiltration vs. Tunneling

The Internet was designed to share data, but sometimes the paths that enable it are blocked. When it comes to bad actors - that's a good thing. Most companies today have a Data Loss Prevention DLP policy to accompany their web proxies and firewalls. Some of them think this is the best way to stop...

Introducing MDBR+: Customized Security for Government Organizations

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EAA Client Escalation of Privilege Vulnerability on Windows

This post covers the details of CVE-2021-40683 CVSS 6.5, the vulnerability impacting the Akamai Enterprise Application Access EAA Client running on Windows systems, for which Akamai has provided a patch to its customers...

Our ESG Commitment: Investing in a Better World

Environmental, social, and governance ESG issues are quickly emerging as a key concern for investors. To use a musical analogy, the bow is just resting on the first string, with more notes sure to follow. At Akamai, our ESG instrument is well tuned and ready for the symphony to come, as evidenced...

Sustainability at Akamai: An Efficient Platform Powered by Energy Aggregation

If I had a dollar for every time I heard "2020 was an unprecedented year", I could fund a clean energy project myself. And while we're tired of hearing it, it's true. Among the pandemic, U.S. presidential election, social justice movements, the finalization of Brexit, and many other new and...

Akamai's Innovation and Collaboration In Renewable Energy

The energy footprint of the IT sector is estimated at 7% of global electricity consumption, according to Greenpeace International. And, although the data center and colocation industry is a small segment of the IT sector, it represents a large portion of its power consumption. By 2020, the power...