NameDrive DDOS Attack

[NameDriver]

Hi guys,

We're currently experiencing a massive DDOS attack and have therefore been experiencing connection difficulties. We apologise for any inconvenience and you will, of course, be compensated for your lost earnings.
We apologise for the inconvenience.

Ed

 

[GreenGambler]

Is it possible that it is a ND competitor? (or someone paid by a competitor?)

I always think the worst...

All the best to ND , hopefully you catch the bastards behind this attack.

I always think thing like that aswell. Or a possible ex or current customer who got mad about something and has nothing better to do with his time, unless this sort of thing is fully automated, I have no clue. Either way I hope that the problem gets fixed and not too much damage is done.

 

[OctaneInv]

I always think thing like that aswell. Or a possible ex or current customer who got mad about something and has nothing better to do with his time, unless this sort of thing is fully automated, I have no clue. Either way I hope that the problem gets fixed and not too much damage is done.

I doubt that it is a competitor. ex client, maybe.

Normally these attacks are for people with absolutely nothing better to do, so they have "Fun" attacking people.

Say you have a car, parked on the street, and you come to find it has been keyed. The chances of this being an "enemy" are there, but much more slim than the chance of it being the thousands of other people who walk by your car every day.

 

[NameDriver]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the continued support in the face of what appears from the outside to be our fault.
We have a lot in place to prevent this, but this is really an unprecedentedly massive attack on our service and our livelihood. We are doing all we can to combat it and will hopefully have a solution shortly.
I can't really speculate on who was responsible, to be honest. The timing is certainly interesting and the beef behind the attack is certainly very impressive. It remains to be seen what the people we've engaged to go snooping can find. Man, I'd love to see these people jailed. Hopefully on an island somewhere with no running water.

Ed

 

[DotWeekly]

Well Ed, I really hope you can find these dirt bags that have done this! Entering day 2 of total darkness at ND.

 

[ukguy]

Just like to say full support for ed and his crew. Having dealt with ND in the past they went to great efforts to solve my problems, keeping me up to date almost hourly. I hold 20-30 domains with them now, and whilst I'm concentrating mostly on other internet areas at the moment I have no hesitation in sticking with them.

One of the few companies with true integrity in this business, so good luck.

PS. If you read this I was the guy with the $220 payment issue you kindly made great efforts to solve with the UK bank.

 

[SharonTucci]

Hi guys,

Just an update here. I can't believe this still hasn't been resolved. This is a massively concerted, aggressive and malicious attack. We deal with a DDOS pretty much every day, but even our sophisticated defenses are somewhat overwhelmed by this. We are working on a solution and hope to be up shortly.

I'll repeat for the nth time that your earnings won't be affected by this and you will be compensated fully once this is over.

I apologise again for other people's malevolence and hope we can get this sorted asap.

Ed

P.S. On the email thing, we would if we could, but there are various factors preventing it, added to the fact that sending out tens of thousands of emails simultaneously would probably lead to many of them ending in people's junk boxes and not being seen anyway. We have posted as much as possible in the public domain what is going on and also on our blog at blog.namedrive.com.

Sorry to hear with what you guys are going through and hope it's resolved soon for the benefit of everyone.

Once things settle down, please drop me a line - on the communication side that you mentioned issues with - junk mail boxes etc - I can provide some guidance.

 

[NameDriver]

Thanks for your patience, guys. It's not the nicest thing to be on the receiving end of.

You should see a few pages filtering through shortly as we are changing them all to mobi templates for now. These templates only have 1 request and so load very quickly compared to the other ones. This will really reduce the load on our servers and allows us to clean up quickly. This change will be hardcoded into the script and not changed in the database, so once this is over, your original template choices will be displayed.
I suppose it's all academic to you as your earnings will be compensated anyway, but I thought I'd just keep you in the loop.

Ed

 

[GILSAN]

I'd love to see these people jailed. Hopefully on an island somewhere with no running water.

Ed

Hey Ed, I know just the right island for you. It´s part of the Madeira Archipelago, its isolated, no running water, no one lives there except for marine birds and some harmless spiders. But we can always ask the Portuguese navy to drop a large container of tarantulas.

Good luck Ed

GIL

 

[midnight251]

Ed,

I hope you track down the people that have done this, and string them up. ND is a great service, best of luck.

 

[-fp-]

I hope you can trace these people and get them to pay a compensation to you!

Would be nice for a change that the people who make the mess also pay for it.

All the best Ed and good luck.

Fabian

 

[NameDriver]

Hello everyone,

I'm not going to get euphoric, but the parking is up and running fast. This was our first priority. The homepage will follow suit.

Thank you all so much for your patience and support. We will certainly reward you and make sure that you don't lose any earnings as a result of this.
I have a funny feeling that, once your compensation has been done, the last 26 hours may be the highest earning 26 hours of the week for you, if you know what I mean .
We don't want you to bear the brunt of this attack.

To give you an idea of what we have been up against since 15.00 GMT yesterday, in addition to the 600K domains we have parked on our system, our servers were being hit by XX,XXX false connections per second for over 24 hours. The attack is increasing as we speak and has been since it began.
We estimate that just to keep up this attack, it has cost the aggressor at least five figures and possibly six figures to initiate and sustain. This wasn't poor defenses on our part, it was the use of overwhelming force and financial resources on theirs. The mind boggles at who has the time or funds to invest in something so unnecessary.

I apologise again for the mess. Please bear with us while we get the homepage up and running today and the revenue correction done, which will take a couple of days to get right.

Ed

 

[aww]

Consider replacing Apache with LiteSpeed for better ddos resistance.
(though I guess the worst is over for now)

 

[djmadfx]

Well I have been reading this thread since yesterday and woke up today thinking that this stuff was going to be over.

Since you already know that it's a bunch of Verizon IPs tell them in the data center to reroute the incoming traffic at the router for a block of Verizon IPs so that they are not hitting your server. A firewall rule shouldv'e been added already as well. Sure, a lot of Verizon hosts won't be able to access NameDrive.com, but at least a bunch of other people will be able to. That is a solution unless there are other hosts attacking as well, which would make it a lot more difficult to route traffic.

 

[NameDriver]

Hi aww and djmadfx,

Thanks for your suggestions. As mentioned, we have really stringent ways of dealing with these things, but it was a massive, massive attack. The Verizon thing was just an original suspicion, but it turned out not to be entirely true.

Things are still a bit wobbly and we'll make sure you'll be fully compensated until we're satisfied that everything is running perfectly, so do not worry if things are not running at 100% at the moment.

Ed

 

[Kenny]

Ed,

You are a true trooper...
Kudos to you and the ND Staff for fighting this thing off and keeping everyone up to date.

Cy

 

[NameDriver]

What a day...

This isn't as much an update as a correction to my post about the HP being up very shortly.
You may have noticed that parking is working fine but that the homepage is still down. This is an inconvenience we are working to resolve. However, this may take some time, so please do not be too concerned if the homepage is not reachable for a while. We will get it up again when everything has blown over and we have repelled the attack.
Thank you again for your patience and I hope you have a great weekend.

Ed

 

[wadodger]

Ed,
Thanks for taking the time to keep people informed here. I would kindly suggest doing the same at all the domainer forums/boards - ie, the Big Three. As always, 'ppreciate your work.

 

[Devil_Dog]

Just makes you wonder who is behind all of this?

 

[tipsfromthetop]

Ed,

You got my emails mate as mentioned we are here to help.. Do not worry about concentrating on compensation just get your business back in shape i have used many parking programs and yours is the best so i will not be moving my names from your program.

Make yourself a cup of tea mate, get some fresh air and give your wife and kids a hug.. It helps relieve the stress levels mate

 

[Jasdon]

To give you an idea of what we have been up against since 15.00 GMT yesterday, in addition to the 600K domains we have parked on our system, our servers were being hit by XX,XXX false connections per second for over 24 hours. The attack is increasing as we speak and has been since it began.
We estimate that just to keep up this attack, it has cost the aggressor at least five figures and possibly six figures to initiate and sustain. This wasn't poor defenses on our part, it was the use of overwhelming force and financial resources on theirs. The mind boggles at who has the time or funds to invest in something so unnecessary.

Ed

The figures you are putting forward to finance such an attack, must narrow down the possible perps......

As many have stated before me, don't worry about the compensation payments - think of it this way; we still made more $ while you were down, than we would if we used Sedo :hehe:

 

[kiore]

You may have noticed that parking is working fine

Hi Ed,

Firstly may I express my sympathy for your plight & also congratulate you on the professional way you are keeping us informed while you are working flat-out to resolve the problem. I also very much appreciate that you are going to compensate us.

Please don't take this as a criticism.

I've just noticed that I still can't get to my parked domains.

Have you blocked access from New Zealand? If so this is bad news for my names as nearly all my domains are .co.nz ones & their natural traffic is from here.

If this is something you need to do to weather the storm, that's fine, but if it's just an oversight I'd feel more comfortable if access was restored.

Thanks

Bruce

 

[djmadfx]

Compare the IP logs to those from NamePros and DNF. I am sure that it would make it easier to find out who it is.

 

[NameDriver]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the kind words. We will compensate because we bear the risk for your domains, you shouldn't have to, that is what we do.

Just to give you an update on this. I am very sorry that the HP is not up yet. Our lead tech guy was up for 36 hours solid battling this thing. The two times he tried getting our HP back up again, the bugs were swarming all over the servers and he brought them down again. After 36 hours, he decided to go to bed so he can get things going with a clear head today.

I appreciate it is a massive inconvenience that you can't log into your account, but that will hopefully be resolved asap today.

If your parking pages aren't resolving, please contact me at [email protected] and I'll try and work out what's going on. Tech say that if you use URL forwarding, then restarting your computer and then viewing the pages may make a difference.

Just to reiterate, whether your pages are live now or not, we will make sure that you do not lose anything as a result of this attack.

Ed

 

[Datalife]

Ed,

Thanks for explaining everything. I didnt know why I couldnt access your homepage and I thought there might be an explanation - Well, I can't believe what has been happening.

Hope you can see this through.

 

[ontapdomains]

Thanks for the update Ed. Hopefully NameDrive can get this resolved soon.