Cloud Network Issue

Back Posted on 20 Feb 2014

Platform: cloud|one server
Start Date & Time (GMT): Thursday 20 February 2014, 1813

Description of issue

We are currently experiencing unusual volume of traffic to one of our Cloud firewalls. The network team are looking in to this and will resolve as soon as possible.

Services affected

All including web and email.

Impact

Email and websites intermittantly unavailable.  Incoming mail may not be accepted but the sending server should retry a number of times over a 24hr period before giving up and reporting a failure to the sender so no mail should be lost.

Update 1835

The issue is confirmed as a DDoS attack. The source of this is completely outwith the control of our engineers however they are working to restore service.

Update 1950

The monitoring system reports all services now available.  Engineers have confirmed that none of our customers were the target of the attack.

Side Note

Even the big players who have sizable resources behind them can't avoid DDoS: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26272526

Further Reading

Definition of DDoS: In computing, a denial-of-service (DoS) or distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of efforts to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet. As clarification, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks are sent by two or more persons, or bots. (See botnet) DoS (Denial of Service) attacks are sent by one person or system.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack