Linode suffers repeated DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks - Update 1/18: TechTarget reports on Linode's response

Tom Paine

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Update 1/18: Linode cloud security response draws praise, raises concerns (TechTarget)

New Philly resident Linode has apparently suffered a widespread DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack over the past several days, the twitteverse reported widely and the company acknowledged:

The reported attacks started Christmas Day in Dallas and spread off and on to other Linode data centers. The attacks have been global in nature. Its not clear yet whether the problems are fully under control.

Network Engineer Alex Forster said in Linode's most recent update yesterday: "All of these attacks have occurred multiple times. Over the course of the last week, we have seen over 30 attacks of significant duration and impact. As we have found ways to mitigate these attacks, the vectors used inevitably change.

As of this afternoon, we have mostly hardened ourselves against the above attack vectors, but we expect more to come. We are working extremely closely with all of our technical partners, including our network equipment vendors and our colocation provider."

In a DOS attack, a malicious agent programs a bot to send a barrage of pings at a server, essentially disabling it. A distributed attack is spread around to different points in a network, making a defense more difficult.

But by itsef, a DOS attack won't compromise files or the information within them.

Saturday Morning update: Attacks continue, mainly centered on Atlanta: Linode status report.

Here's Slashdot's thread on Linode's problems.

Linode's latest status reports as of Saturday evening show its still trying to clean up the Atlanta problems. It keeps referring to its upstream provider, which I believe
is Zayo.

#linode has been under a heavy #ddos #cyberattack since Christmas affecting millions of customers. Where's the press on this?

— Alex Williams (@alex_williams) January 3, 2016

No knock on him, but he is not 'the Alex Williams.' But his tweet is on target.

Some joker suggested that Linode rent a few EC2 instances from AWS and run their business off of them.

No comment from Linode, other than to follow the status updates for now.
But as of Saturday night, things appear more under control.

Our servers in Atlanta are responding and fast for 2 hours now. Some hopes there. #linode

— Raphael Leroux (@r_leroux) January 3, 2016

Update: Linode status report as of Sunday evening
DOS attacks reacurring periodically. Linode is trying to 'rope them off' into a specified area.

Here's the Hacker News thread; has some interesting stuff.

Linode: back at last after ten days of hell (The Register)

Hosted DNS Performance Issue
Incident Report for Linode
An Incident Update Has Been Posted
Our staff is continuing to monitor for further attacks. At this time our DNS systems are continuing to function normally, AXFR remains disabled.
Jan 4, 05:47 UTC

An Incident Update Has Been Posted
Our engineers are continuing to harden our DNS systems from the ongoing attacks. We will provide an update once additional progress has been made.
Jan 4, 20:04 UTC



Here's a twitter timeline of Linode-related comments:

#linode Tweets