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Google rushes in where Akamai fears to tread, shields Krebs after world's-worst DDoS

600 Gbps traffic flood overwhelmed CDN

Google has provided free distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) mitigation services to security publication Krebs on Security, stepping in after Akamai withdrew support.

The information security site was last week hammered with a 620Gbps DDoS attack, widely rated one of the world's largest by volume of junk data.

Mitigation platform Akamai soaked up the attack traffic under pro bono protection it offered Krebs until it cut the site loose claiming it could no longer shield the site without impacting paying customers.

Krebs went offline to shield his hosting provider and returned today under Google's free DDoS attack mitigation service Project Shield. Google provides the shield to verified journalists and non-profit organisations.

Krebs on Security focuses on information-security-related crime and is known for revealing the suspected identities of those behind attacks.

As a result it has sparked the ire of many online criminals who launch regular DDoS attacks against the site, and often mock Krebs on Security journalist Brian Krebs in crime forums.

The site recently exposed vDOS a DDoS attack service, known as a booter, which provided what it called stress testing services to customers.

Booters are sold as legitimate tools for admins to test their own network resilience against DDoS, but are more often than not used in illegal DDoS attacks against various sites. The service saw its alleged operators arrested in an FBI sting. ®

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