Microsoft confirmed it was the victim of a denial of service attack yesterday, which it said was separate to the human error that crippled its main web properties for much of Tuesday and Wednesday.

In a statement issued late yesterday, the software giant said it was the target of an attack against the routers that direct traffic to the company's web sites, including Microsoft.com and MSN.com. Customers could only gain intermittent access to those sites on Thursday.

Microsoft claimed the attack was not related to any of its products, but an "attempt to interfere" with the routers in one of its internet data centres.

The attack came only a day after an erroneous configuration change by a Microsoft technician rendered the company's domain name system servers inaccessible for most of Tuesday and Wednesday.

In the statement, Microsoft said: "It is unfortunate that an individual or group of individuals would engage in this kind of illegal activity." It added that it has notified the FBI and has taken immediate steps to ensure its websites are accessible.

Analysts believe this week's events are a huge embarrassment for Microsoft, which recently launched a multi-million dollar campaign to promote its web properties. Some observers were also surprised that Microsoft's sites could fall victim to a denial of service attack given that such occurrences are nothing new and that there are numerous products on the market that prevents such events.

Rob Enderle, an analyst at researcher, Giga Information Group, said: "Microsoft should be relatively safe against denial of service attacks as most large sites have policies in place. The fact that Microsoft was attacked means that it was either unprepared or that it was an unusually harsh attack."

He added that attacks on companies are often related to business events and speculated that Microsoft could have been targeted by an individual unhappy about the software giant's settlement with Sun Microsystems over their legal Java dispute, which was announced on Tuesday.

Microsoft has been the victim of a number of hack attacks over the past few months. In October, the company admitted that source code for some of its products under development was seen by hackers who gained access to its corporate network.

See also:

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Microsoft week ends with another attack

Microsoft said it was the victim of a second denial of service attack that prevented some customers from accessing its website late Friday UK time.  29 Jan 2001

Microsoft's nightmare week

It started when hackers defaced its New Zealand website. An admin error then blocked access to all its main websites for almost 24 hours. Finally two cyber attacks crippled many of its websites. vnunet.com brings you all the details of Microsoft's bad week at the office...  26 Jan 2001

Microsoft websites knocked out

Microsoft's main websites, including Hotmail and MSN, were knocked out of action for most of Wednesday, but the company said it was due to a technical problem rather than a cyber attack.  25 Jan 2001

Microsoft network criticised after outage

Security and network experts have slammed Microsoft for blaming yesterday's website outage on human error rather than its own network design.  25 Jan 2001

Hackers target UK car websites

Car manufacturers in the UK have become the latest victims of computer hackers who have defaced the websites of four of them in the last two days.  24 Jan 2001

Microsoft's New Zealand website hacked

Microsoft has had another of its international websites broken into and defaced by hackers.  23 Jan 2001

Hackers beat Microsoft - again

Microsoft this morning fell victim to hackers for the second time in just three days when attackers brought down the software giant's Slovenia website.  18 Dec 2000

Hackers saw Microsoft source code

UPDATED: Microsoft has admitted that source code for some of its products under development was seen by hackers who gained access to its corporate network.  30 Oct 2000

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