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If you're having trouble accessing NamePros, you're not the only one. At around 7 PM 8/15/2013 EDT, a particularly trouble attack was launched against NamePros. The site was available off and on for a few minutes until our hosting provider blocked all traffic to our web server, at which point the site was unavailable.
NamePros, like all web services, is constantly under attack from a variety of sources. Most are automated, and not targeted at any specific entity; bots crawl the Internet looking for vulnerable targets, and cause trouble when they find security holes. These are generally benign, and we block them without much difficulty.
This attack, however, was targeted directly at NamePros. According to our hosting provider, it was a SYN flood, a type of DoS attack, on port 80 (HTTP). We didn't get a chance to observe whether it was a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) or from a single source, but it was likely distributed. In non-technical terms, a lot of hijacked computers across the Internet were aimed at NamePros, and the attacker instructed them to flood our web server with traffic. Our server attempted to respond to all of the traffic, but couldn't handle the exceptionally high load.
As some of you may already know, we have been working on an overhaul to our server setup. In response to the attack, we have rolled out some of the changes earlier than planned, without as much testing as we would have liked. As you can see, we are back online, and this particular type of attack will be mostly harmless in the future. We have not completely transitioned to our new system, however, and as such still have some minor stability issues.
Additionally, you may encounter problems due to the unplanned partial transition. For one, chat is down as of writing, though it will resume operation shortly. If you notice any other problems, please create a new thread in Tech Support.
NamePros, like all web services, is constantly under attack from a variety of sources. Most are automated, and not targeted at any specific entity; bots crawl the Internet looking for vulnerable targets, and cause trouble when they find security holes. These are generally benign, and we block them without much difficulty.
This attack, however, was targeted directly at NamePros. According to our hosting provider, it was a SYN flood, a type of DoS attack, on port 80 (HTTP). We didn't get a chance to observe whether it was a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) or from a single source, but it was likely distributed. In non-technical terms, a lot of hijacked computers across the Internet were aimed at NamePros, and the attacker instructed them to flood our web server with traffic. Our server attempted to respond to all of the traffic, but couldn't handle the exceptionally high load.
As some of you may already know, we have been working on an overhaul to our server setup. In response to the attack, we have rolled out some of the changes earlier than planned, without as much testing as we would have liked. As you can see, we are back online, and this particular type of attack will be mostly harmless in the future. We have not completely transitioned to our new system, however, and as such still have some minor stability issues.
Additionally, you may encounter problems due to the unplanned partial transition. For one, chat is down as of writing, though it will resume operation shortly. If you notice any other problems, please create a new thread in Tech Support.
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