akamai-update.microsoft.com?

After wiping my hard disk, reformating, and reinstalling windows, I
went to windowsupdate.microsoft.com to download security patches.

Although this worked without a hitch in the past, windows update just
scanned my system and failed to produce a catalog of required updates.
The progress indicator never went beyond 0%.

When I tried a second time, I was redirected to
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/thanks.

After rebooting my computer, my hardware firewall blocked 3 encrypted
HTTPS connection attempts from my computer to 208.187.212.24,
208.187.212.25, and 208.187.212.153. These addresses all belong to
Akamai Technologies.

What kind of a scam is this?

 

I have the Critical Updates Notifier installed on my PC, and received a
notification that there was a new critical update - DirectX 9. I chose to
install it. I was surprised after downloading the setup file (DXWSETUP.EXE)
when my firewall asked to approve a connection by this program to
www.fbi.gov .

I know both sites (download.microsoft.com and www.fbi.gov) run on Akamai
servers - is this just a DNS error or is the FBI hosting files for
Microsoft?

BTW, all this occurred before Blaster.

 

That is indeed very interesting. I wouldn't be surprised that the FBI
approached Microsoft to direct all of their traffic their way so that they
can monitor terrorist activities...MSN messenger, hotmails are quite
popular... so watch what you say boys and girls... I doubt the terrorists
would be stupid enough to send things unencrypted and coded anyways...

R Green
Technical Support