Massive DDOS Attack
December 12, 2005 on 2:09 pm | In Foobars, Updates by Josh Jones | 70 Comments
In case you are having problems accessing your site or email right now, all our uplinks to the net are currently saturated by a massive distributed denial of service attack.
We’re working hard to get it under control.. please visit http://status.dreamhost.com/ (bookmark that page.. it’s our off-network status page for just such emergencies) for all updates from here on out!
Bleah..
70 Responses to “Massive DDOS Attack”
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December 12th, 2005 at 2:48 pm
hmm.. didnt even noticed it.
geez. a bit confuse on why people would do this, especially to such a happy fun webhost.
December 12th, 2005 at 3:48 pm
Thought it was down cause I hadn’t paid my bill in a couple months. Oh well finally got me off my butt to pay the bill.
December 12th, 2005 at 3:55 pm
According to the Status page all is well, but I still can’t login to my server via FTP. I guess I’ll just have to take a longer break.
December 12th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
Hmm. The “Emergency Status” page says things are back to normal, but my site is still down.
December 12th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
The status page said it was OK about a half hour ago, then later the message wasn’t there. I see it’s back. Still no access.
December 12th, 2005 at 3:59 pm
My sites on server >> cordial
December 12th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
oops
My site on server Cordial are still down too. They had come back up for a little while, then went down again. I guess it takes time to start up all these machines, making sure they do it right.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
My site is completely down eventhough an hour or more ago the status page said moreorless everything was being taken care of. This is particularly bad since I had info on there that I need for my final which is coming up in a few hours!!!! Yikes!! I hope you can get this fixed as soon as possible!
December 12th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
It would seem some of the servers have some residual… issues. I’m still connected via ssh to tetris (where, incidentally, my sites are) from some cleaning up I was doing, and it’s alive, but barely. It can recognise typing, an ls managed to go through, but it certainly doesn’t feel “well”.
I guess there’s some sort of weird residual issue things, but beats me what they could be. Tetris was feeling well when the DDoS thing came up on the status page, so this is an after-effect?
December 12th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
My site’s not working either..the status page needs to be updated.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
My website is also still down, but the status page says things are okay. Guess it’s still being taken care of? Thanks.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:13 pm
They just changed the status page, they are getting an attack from a new ip.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
I’ve been with you guy just over two weeks; sorry, the mail server is down; sorry, your site is down no it’s up, no it’s down, now it’s up, sorry your site is down. You guys are worse than the host I had before. I can’t believe so many big names recommend you guy. Your service sucks.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:18 pm
[...] DreamHost was this afternoon hit by a massive distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS) according to the official DreamHost Blog and the DreamHost Emergency Status. A DDoS attack is most often a “bandwidth consumption” attack where the combined Internet connection bandwidth of many machines is “focused”, or directed, upon one or a few machines. Although the attack’s individual Internet packets may be completely harmless, a flood of such packets can overwhelm the target machine’s Internet connection or other packet-processing resources. The result is that valid traffic, unable to compete with the malicious flood, has little chance of obtaining useful service. [...]
December 12th, 2005 at 4:20 pm
Crap. Hopefully the DDoSers make some sort of mistake and the law enforcement gets to hail their sorry asses away…
Funny coincidence: I was just about to write some basic stuff about DoS to Dreamhost hosted wiki when this started. My typing does not generate 1000mbs, though.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
David, you DO realize that ALL hosting providers get hit with junk like this from time to time, right? I’ve used multiple hosting providers over the last few years, and Dreamhost has consistently been the best one I’ve worked with, while others have been complete and utter bollocks (Cyberpixels, I’m looking in your direction).
December 12th, 2005 at 4:24 pm
David, I’ve been with DH for a year and have brought a dozen or so clients along. This is the first time they’ve gone down like this — barring the time the power went out in Los Angeles.
DOS attacks happen. No host is entirely immune from them — less so one as cheap/affordable as DH.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:27 pm
Well, my site’s back up. Phew. My millions of readers must have been getting very antsy.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:43 pm
My sites are hosted on lucas. I cannot connect via SSH, FTP or HTTP–despite the status page saying that both DDoS attacks have been dealt with… Perhaps #3 has already started???
December 12th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
I was having problems earlier and I couldnt figure it out. Thanks!
FTP was down, site was mollasses and I thought ‘hmm… somethings up’
Oh wellzies.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:48 pm
They really should not post that “things are better again” when my site hosted on herod is unreachable.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
David, chill out relax. They’re working on it.
This crap happens every now and then.
Go to that place I like to call “outside” for awhile.
I know it’s scary out there but try it, you may like it.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
I hope this is resolved by the end of the day. My access to my server is vital in getting info to my clients.
December 12th, 2005 at 4:56 pm
My sites are on ellipsis and it’s been all bad news for the last couple hours–the posts saying things are a.o.k are a little annoying…
December 12th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
I’ve been passing the time waiting for my server to get going again (forint) by imagining fun ways to torture, er… punish people who get caught for this kind of nonsense.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
DDoS, ahoy!
Sorry about the downtime. My webhost suffered a massive DDoS attack today, and Loaded Mouth became one of the affected sites. Grr.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:13 pm
The emergency status page says that things are better, but they are not. My site is down. I can not access it through ftp. I am on sepulveda server. Any idea when this will be fixed? I know this happens to many servers, but I have also been w/dreamhost only a short time and have had more downtime, email problems, and mysql problems, than I have in the 5+ years that I’ve been using another shared server. I think it is fair to expect things like this not to happen so often, and it is especially important to warn other people who are thinking of switching to dreamhost.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
I haven’t noticed any downtime for my sites…
December 12th, 2005 at 5:16 pm
well… same happens here.. 16:16 PST and still POGO down.
December 12th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
I wake up to an email from my bro telling me his site is down. He sent that at around 6 PM EST. An hour and a half later and quid is still down. Mail is working though so I can receive all my spam. Jabber, web, ftp, and ssh are still down. So everything that’s worthwhile isn’t working. Could someone give quid a nice kick to his side to wake him up?
/me twiddles his fingers while he waits.
December 12th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
Man the battle stations, Dreamhost under attack!
Dreamhost has been fighting DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks all day. A DDoS attack is where a server is so flooded with meaningless traffic that it can’t do anything. Think of a child pulling at your elbow, “Mom! Mom!…
December 12th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
1000mbs of traffic….. WOW!
I would LOVE to have something with that big of a pipe run to my house!
Bittorrent :)
(Legal ones of course)
I still don’t understand why someone would be DDoS’ing Dreamhost. What will it prove?
DoS someone else like…. http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/
They deserve it… not dreamhost.
December 12th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
[...] Desde hoy a la tarde Dreamhost, donde hosteo todos mis sites y uno de los servicios de webhosting más populares entre bloggers, sufrió 3 ataques DDoS con una hora de diferencia entre uno y otro (+ en su blog). De hecho continúan sufriendolos así que muchos sites están sin funcionar, o funcionando intermitentemente. [...]
December 12th, 2005 at 6:12 pm
Dreamhost is down a lot the past few months to try and deny that is just DOWN right silly. Go to their forums and see how many people have been talking about the down time over the past months.
My sites have been down like most of the rest of you for well over two hours. But see we are starting to get use to all the “down” time. You say go with what dedicated servers on dreamhost? Good luck we been asking since Aug and them telling us Oct, then telling us Jan that they are “adding more room”.
It’s enough to make anyone pull their hair out.
December 12th, 2005 at 7:16 pm
I’ve been with Dreamhost for over a year, and in that time, I’ve never experienced anything of this magnitude. What I have experienced is
A: Friendly communications.
B: Quick resolution to my problems.
C: Amazing value.
Recommending Dreamhost is a no-brainer.
December 12th, 2005 at 7:40 pm
[...] Se puede obtener mayor información en el blog oficial de DramHost. [...]
December 12th, 2005 at 8:09 pm
I’ve been with Dreamhost for the last 3 months and it has been excellent.
Mail and everything has been fine. Sites have been up and fast.
The panel was slow for the first few days but has picked up ok now.
I’m loving it – thankyou dreamhost. It is great value.
December 12th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
I just bought a host for 4 days… Hope it will be ok asap.
December 12th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
[...] I had trouble reading my mail and you might as well had trouble accessing this site. Evidently Dreamhost was dealing with a distributed denial of service attack. [...]
December 12th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
And *I’ve* been with DH for one year and there’s no doubt about it… they’ve been having serious problems the past couple of months. It’s insulting to suggest otherwise.
Specifically, mail service has been extremely spotty. Web/DB/etc have been relatively fine(though I know they’ll never offer SLAs at this rate).
When I’ve had to deal with Support, they’ve been kind and helpful, if not speedy in a couple of cases. No gripe there.
But these creeping instabilities really do have to end. It is tough to find RELIABILITY among the uh, “value-based” ISPs and I do appreciate DH’s market realities.
However, the above acronym SLA — there are offerings out there(let’s not name them in the blog just yet!) that promise good value and rock solid performance. If not, they credit your account. Yeah, I’ve learned to be sceptical too but that kind of promise does tend to result in better service.
Help me DH, I’d rather not explore further beyond the contact list I compiled today. It’d be “great” to see you sharing some of your plans for increasing reliability at DH via this blog. Oh, and yes that’s my vote for #1 job goal in 2006.
Congratulations for what I’m sure was a banner year — now go for the long haul.
Shuttin’ up now. Peace.
December 12th, 2005 at 9:49 pm
I’ve been a loyal DH customer for over 2 years and although service has been less reliable this year than the first year I was a member, I will never hunt for another server.
Things happen. No matter how much they prepare to fight an attack like this, there’s really only so much they can do. These sorts of things happen to every company once in a while.
I’ve found that what they do offer outweighs the slight problems. It’s also easy to tell they’re always trying to think of new ways they can give us more benefit for our money.
I’m hard pressed to think of another service that costs less than ten bucks a month (for most of us), that would do so much to give us extra features without charging more. The staff is always helpful, considerate and I really do believe they’re working as hard as they can to make this a great company.
I appreciate what they do and look forward to seeing what they have in store for us in 2006.
Thanks, Dreamhost!
December 12th, 2005 at 11:53 pm
Ataque a Dreamhost y ExternalTest
http://blog.dreamhost.com/2005/12/12/massive-ddos-attack/
December 13th, 2005 at 4:07 am
My sites 4 fully hosted domains and 4 subdomains for testing and the effect only hit me for about 5 minutes or less time it takes to get coffee.
Things seem fine now. I noticed the effect through the email since I use office 2003 checked the status page and was happy this was being taken care of so fast.
Dave,
I have been with DreamHost for over 5 years now and have over 17 years online and many hosts. These guys do know what they are doing give the best service and allow the most leaniant use policy of all.
Things happen, get used to it welcome to the www. Never have I lost a customer or emails or had any complaints.
The child script kiddies and warze site should be shut down not to mention the DreamHost users themselves should be more attentive to the requests that support asks of use shared hosting services.
We are changing to thier dedicated service soon. If your site is mission critical may I suggest you consider going that route, or build a server yourself we did and believe me it is not all that easy to run, secure, nor is it cheap!
Bottom line: DreamHost rocks!
December 13th, 2005 at 8:00 am
It is suprising how everyone is willing to believe whatever comes out of Dreamhost without any inquiry. Do we have any proof that the DDos attacked happened, besides not being able to access our websites? Isn’t it likely that Dreamhost might have just screwed up and then they built up this shit to deflact the blame? Yes it could happen and it seems it is very easy to make people believe in such things.
I personally don’t care what happens as long as I am provided the service that I was promised and that I paid for.
Dreamhost has been very unreliable … e-mail down, servers down and on and on …
December 13th, 2005 at 8:57 am
Well, I don’t think it’s too suprising that people believe us when we say what’s going on, because whenever it really is something we’ve just plain screwed up, we admit it (including the many, many things I’ve personally screwed up in the last 6 years).
When we accidentally fatfinger an update in the database, we admit it!
Plus with a DDoS you can verify packet loss due to saturation. I mean, I could post a picture of the net graph during the attacks, but of course I could have just Photoshopped it! Actually, I’ll put one up there anyway because blogs without lots of pictures are boring!
December 13th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
Hey Josh and Nate,
My compliments on the great Photoshopped image of the DDOS Attack graphic! It’s pretty artistic and has a good beat but I don’t know if I can dance to it.
With that said, shouldn’t you be busy making every John Doe out there as happy as possible, if not, a little more paranoid and suspicious?
Man, it must be tough being mistaken for working within the Bush Administration, eh?
Are you really just sittin’ around eatin’ yellow cake, drinking beer and whippin’ out those gold dang graphs instead of fixin’ things? Inquiring minds would like to know…ya know?
Oh, and by the way, my chit still ain’t workin’ either, dambit gumby, but, I’m sure you’re workin’ on it so I think I’ll contact support just in case. There are only 609 other currently open requests.
So, as they say down yonder in the Indian Nation, Git R Done…y buena suerte and of course keep up the great PhotoShop work!
You guys still rock, we’ll see by how much though by how soon my chit starts to workin’ again.
December 13th, 2005 at 1:12 pm
I’ve been a happy DH customer for a year now – glad they got that new generator too. I would definitely put more reliability above new features. The people who really care about uptime won’t care about a $20 we-screwed-up credit, as the lost traffic would be worth a lot more than that.
December 13th, 2005 at 1:38 pm
I’ve been with Dreamhost for 7 years. I still recommend them. I’d like to know what the motivation for this attack was. If something in particular is putting the bullseye here, I’d like to know about it, and hear about action to stop it.
On the other hand, when bad things happen here, and I assume they happen everywhere, the dreamhost staff have been cheerful, diligent and reliable. If you want jaded, unresponsive and unknowledgable service, start shopping elsewhere.
December 13th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
what i find hilarious is that the writer of the above quote goes on about questioning dh’s “reliability” and honesty, and then has the balls to sign his name as “John Doe” and not leave a website.
CREDIBILITY. ZERO.
dreamhost, i still
December 13th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
that last line should say “dreamhost, i still [heart] you.” lousy HTML entities.
December 13th, 2005 at 7:17 pm
I hope it was obvious that my earlier comments were “tongue in cheekly” directed at da man “Johnny D” aka John Doe rather than at DH staff.
So, I guess if this mess ain’t cleaned up with finesse, and quickly, then we oughta go get a rope, eh? ;-) It would be nice to hang the little weenies that started this mess.
I very much agree that DH is by far the best I’ve ever used and I’ve been envolved with web development since 1994. My hat’s off to them!
December 14th, 2005 at 6:18 am
I’ve been developing enterprise web services for about 29 years, about 25 of those with dreamhost.
I guarentee they are the best. I would give my left arm for them, in fact i did back in ‘73.
December 15th, 2005 at 7:13 pm
[...] I like how they send out such emails…someone out there seems not to like Dreamhost lately. [...]
December 15th, 2005 at 7:14 pm
Site and Email disruptions
Just got notified by Dreamhost that they are encountering problems with their servers that houses this site’s pages and emails….
December 16th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
Hey I found out it was the site I admin that was targeted. I have a bunch of evidence if you want to contact me via e-mail feel free. I’m going to try calling support later, hopefully they’ll answer. If not I’ll try again tomorrow.
-Thanks, Josh Kirby
December 17th, 2005 at 12:04 am
the headlines write themselves: “when dreamhost becomes a nightmare,” etc etc
December 17th, 2005 at 11:28 am
ugh.dreamhost.com is down for me… UGH is right =(
December 17th, 2005 at 3:01 pm
People, quit yer bitchin. I’ve been with PLENTY of hosts, and this shit happens with everyone. I guess you can’t please everyone this time of year.
December 17th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
So, why would anyone do DOS at DH? That’s the main question? Please give your thories if there is nothing more solid is available.
December 17th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
Maybe it’s offtopic, but i just wanted to say, that it’s really interesting to read everything this with comments… You discuss here a lot of interesting things on different useful themes. Thanks for that =)
December 18th, 2005 at 2:16 pm
[...] A lot of the members have pointed out that there are a lot of features missing so I’ve been working on integrating a bigger and better forum system the last three days. I’ ran across an issue seems to be unanswered anywhere I’ve checked, so I decided to move on, but my host is having troubles with a Massive DDOS Attack along with a server crash or two. So I took a break and hopefully they’ll be back under control today. Look forward to it, it’s gonna be Very Spiffy. (popup) | permalink [...]
December 18th, 2005 at 9:35 pm
Not the actual DH server was being attacked, just a website hosted on DH was being attacked, causing lag for everyone else?
December 19th, 2005 at 4:36 pm
I got to see a funky graph so who cares!
December 19th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
Well Jennifer, they wanted to take my site offline, so they attacked DH which took all the sites down.
And still no response from the DH guys yet =\
December 20th, 2005 at 9:47 am
Them assholes are attacking my site too. So it’s not only you they’re attacking.
December 21st, 2005 at 7:55 pm
it’s 21 december and my site’s still down, although your status page says everything’s ok.
December 25th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Do we have any proof that the DDos attacked happened, besides not being able to access our websites? Isn’t it likely that Dreamhost might have just screwed up and then they built up this shit to deflact the blame? Yes it could happen and it seems it is very easy to make people believe in such things.
December 26th, 2005 at 8:58 am
How do we know the people here that are complaining aren’t from another hosting company that started this DOS attack?
If it wasn’t for this blog i would have never known about this…
December 31st, 2005 at 8:26 pm
Yeah, we had one of those DDOS attacks at work. I was going to call our guy in at about 2am. But he drunk called me before I could get to dialing.
April 13th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
[...] No llevo ni una semana y ya están bajo un ataque DOS (Denegación de Servicios – Denial of Service). Realmente yo no sabía de este tipo de ataques (o no sabía que les llamaban así), pero parece que está de moda… Dear Users, As you can see our servers and your sites are running very slow. The reason for that is that our hosting is under heavy DOS (Denial of Service) attack, we are doing everything possible to stop and filter that attack, but it’s taking a while. Your accounts and sites information are safe, we are really sorry for the inconvenience and we hope it will be resolved soon. [...]