DNS and Services Interruption

On Tuesday a small segment of our customers may have experienced a period of approximately 45 minutes where hosting services were unavailable due to DNS Problems.  After review we found that one of our DNS servers in a North American Datacenter was the target of a DDoS attack that crippled many sites and services yesterday.  We quickly responded and mitigated the attack bringing all services back online within minutes.  Below is a report on this attack from the US-CERT National Cyber Alert System.

National Cyber Alert System

Technical Cyber Security Alert TA12-024A

"Anonymous" DDoS Activity

   Original release date: January 24, 2012

   Last revised: --

   Source: US-CERT

Overview

US-CERT has received information from multiple sources about coordinated distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks with targets that included U.S. government agency and entertainment industry websites. The loosely affiliated collective "Anonymous" allegedly promoted the attacks in response to the shutdown of the file hosting site MegaUpload and in protest of proposed U.S. legislation concerning online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods (Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA).

   Target selection, timing, and other attack activity is often  coordinated through social media sites or online forums.

   US-CERT is continuing research efforts and will provide additional data as it becomes available.