REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 1, 2003 -- The Web site properties of Microsoft.com today experienced a denial-of-service attack, which lasted approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes. A denial-of-service attack is simply a malicious flood of site requests that results in exponentially higher-than-normal traffic, and overwhelms the server capacity. This attack does not have any association with any known vulnerability in Microsoft software. Microsoft has contacted the appropriate authorities, is cooperating in the investigation of the cause of this attack, and will take appropriate action. Microsoft regrets any inconvenience this has caused to visitors to the Microsoft.com Web site.