DDOS Attack affecting Pinbrook

[Gill C]

Thanks Duncan for explaining the situation .

I appreciate that "these things happen" but not having a clue even what a DDOS attack is I have to ask the question somewhere. I'm sure the most important thing for Pinbrook is to use all their resources to try and stop the attack and keep their systems up and running but it's also helpful to get some contact from them so we know what to expect.

[Duncan Allan]

It's basically a ransom demand.

A host is attacked by sending hundreds of thousands of requests to the server in the space of one second from random addresses. This causes the server/s to be flooded with so many requests it can't cope and may fall over and stop working.

The ransom demand is made prior to an attack by stating that if they don't pay up it will start after a deadline.

Hosts put in place overflow servers so that it can cope with the flood of requests and hopefully still keep up the service.

A DDOS attack could even be levied at you or I or a single site that has a knock on effect to the whole system.

I understand that Pinbrook were attacked with 175,000 requests per second!

If only they were orders I could retire!

Duncan

[TraceyHand]

I understand that Pinbrook were attacked with 175,000 requests per second!

If only they were orders I could retire!

Duncan

Or you'd keel over first trying to dispatch them!
Especially as at least 75% of those 175,000 customers want their stuff yesterday!

[Duncan Allan]

LOL Tracey,

Well you'd just have to get your customers to keep up the birth rate so we have a labour force [pun intended ] to fulfill the demand in the future.

In the mean time I'd have to rely on Polish and Czech workers!!! he said tongue in cheek.

As for them wanting their orders yesterday I have always said,

Today's the tomorrow your worried about yesterday.

Oh the joys of a short break with zero orders until now.

Duncan

[Gill C]

my site's been up and running a few hours now - have things stabilised do we think?

[Jan]

I have just spoken to Jo's support guys again (yes at 7:30 in the evening :-)) and the attack has been deflected, systems should be working as well as if not better than normal. If you are still experiencing problems please raise a ticket with the pinbrook support desk.

Regards,

[pinbrook]

Sorry for the delayed input from myself.

As you know we experienced a prolonged and targetted DDOS attack. It initialy targetted one of the mail servers, but its knock on effect took out the network. At best the network was intermittant.

We have done all we can during the past few days to manage the attack as best we could.

As you know DDOS attacks are just one of those malicious internet activites we have to live with and deal with as best we can.

My support guys are very busy in our support desk answering questions. We would appreciate all enquiries being raised there, as this is the quickest mechanism for timely responses. The support desk is hosted outside of our data centre to ensure we have this method of communication in times of trouble.

[n-lampen]

My website www.thegoodgiftcompany.com has been down since Tuesday 7.00PM ish. Now any mail that is sent to that domain is bounced back to the senders. I have tried to contact Pinbrook both by phone and email and have heard nothing in response. Sooner or later a spider will come by and note that the website no longer exists. Current customers cannot visit the website or even email me so probably wonder if I have fled the country, and potential customers can't find us; not to mention the money that has been wasted on Google Adwords - and from Pinbrook? Nothing. They have been hosting our website for two months and if our site/email isn't running tomorrow I will spend all day finding a new hosting provider.

Sorry to rant about this here but I'm not getting any joy from Pinbrook and this may be the only way to get a response.

[Jan]

> I have tried to contact Pinbrook both by phone and email
Have you raised a ticket with their support desk? I find that is the quickest way to get problems sorted out.

> Google Adwords
have you paused your campaign?

If you run a network test from Actinic, what result do you get?

Regards,

[n-lampen]

Jan - I have raised three tickets today and left three phone messages. They can't email me anyway as the email is down. I have paused Google adwords so that's OK. I'm now at home but from memory Actinic tries to upload and can not find the server. I can ftp the server from the office, but that's about it.

[n-lampen]

Funnily enough if you use the dedicated IP address 80.243.176.181 you can visit the site.

[Jan]

Nick,

I have an answer for you but it's not something I can post here, give me a call at Mole End as soon as you can. This problem is not being caused by your hosting.

Regards,

[n-lampen]

Jan - you were right. Thanks very much. I appreciate all the help. I owe you.

[Jan]

Thanks Nick but it was Pinbrook support who were right, I got an email from them at 10:30 last night, I just passed the message on to you.

Regards,

[pinbrook]

DDOS attacks are not something we relish....

Hopefully we are over the worst of it now. I can only apologise if people were frustrated by delays in communication, but it is one of those circumstances were we have to divert all staff to managing the situation, thus we work out our own internal priorities and work with them, by default replying to telephone calls has low priority.

We have tried to keep people updated as best we can, most tickets in the support desk have had less than an hour turnaound time.

But sometimes there simply is no new news to divulge.