Oracle Buys Dyn, Which Fell Victim To A DDoS Attack Last Month

Software giant Oracle announced Monday (Nov. 21) it has inked a deal to acquire Dyn, the cloud-based internet performance and DNS provider. Dyn monitors, controls and optimizes internet applications and cloud-based services.

In a press release, Oracle said the acquisition is a natural extension for the company’s cloud computing platform. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. “Oracle already offers enterprise-class IaaS and PaaS for companies building and running internet applications and cloud services,” said Thomas Kurian, president of product development for Oracle, in the press release announcing the deal. “Dyn’s immensely scalable and global DNS is a critical core component and a natural extension to our cloud computing platform.”

According to Oracle, Dyn’s service is backed by a global network that drives 40 billion traffic optimization decisions daily for more than 3,500 companies, including Netflix, Twitter, Pfizer and CNBC. Adding Dyn, Oracle said it can extend the Oracle cloud computing platform and give enterprise customers a one-stop shop for all their Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service needs. “Oracle cloud customers will have unique access to internet performance information that will help them optimize infrastructure costs, maximize application and website-driven revenue and manage risk,” said Kyle York, chief strategy officer of Dyn, in the same press release. “We are excited to join Oracle and bring even more value to our customers as part of Oracle’s cloud computing platform.”

The move on the part of Oracle to acquire Dyn comes just as Dyn was the target of a massive DDoS attack that shut down some big name websites for a time last month. The massive distributed denial-of-service attack on Dyn caused a ripple of disruption to websites across all sorts of industries — GitHub, Netflix, Twitter, Walgreens, The New York Times, PayPal, Spotify and many others. It didn’t take long for thousands of Americans to experience the magnitude of a DDoS attack and the potential damage these malicious events can bring about. According to TechCrunch, the DDoS attack on Dyn was fueled by a botnet known as Mirai, which utilized hacked DVRs and webcams to launch the series of attacks. Not only has this impacted a number of companies that are now forced to recall their IoT devices that are vulnerable to hacks, but the rise in massive attacks like what happened to Dyn is significantly influencing the DDoS protection markets as well.