Services of Windows

[Caius]

I've found an Akamai service by Microsoft Corporation. I haven't heard of it before, what is it?

[caravel]

Can you post the exact service name and description?

[Caius]

Its listed in Services under "System Utility Configuration". It can be accesed under Run... then "msconfig"

[caravel]

Yes Caius, I know that but what is the exact name and description of this suspect service?

Also you can access services from msconfig but the best way to access them is through services.msc

[Caius]

Route: C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe -k Akamai
Description (its in English): Provides networking protocol and file transfer technologies. If the service is stopped, those applications that depend on the service may fail to transfer files or otherwise function properly.

Well, I never heard of this service before. It doesn't sound odd, by the way.

[caravel]

I can find very little on this service. I have heard of Akamai but not an Akamai service taking this form. if you google the description there are only about two hits. It seems to be related to something called "Metacafe". Did you download anything of this ilk? The few other security sites that mention it have it under review, Mcafee list it as low risk adware/spyware. You should have a look for Add/remove programs and see if it is listed there and try and remove it.

Also run scans with Spybot S&D and a virus scan to see if anything is picked up. Failing that you should download hijackthis, generate a log and post the log up here.

[Husar]

Akamai is a company?!

[Ramses II CP]

Akamai is a legitimate Microsoft partner, but that doesn't necessarily mean this safe or not. If you could find the .dlls associated with the service that might clear things up. I would strongly expect Spybot to catch this if it's bad mojo, it's right up their alley.

This is one of those things there's probably no way to research on your own because it's very difficult to track back from an svchost executable to the source.

[Lemur]

Note that the process is actually svchost.exe, not akami.exe. And svchost.exe is as common as dirt. Not sure why there's the "-k akami" tacked on to it, but offhand I'd say that svchost is nothing to get worried about. As others have suggested, run your AV software a couple of times and see if it rings any alarms.

[Riedquat]

Hey Caius! look at this post (spanish)

If speedy use akamai technologies is very probable all the other national companies too, after all Telefonica is the owner of them all ;)