Au cours des douze jours qui se sont écoulés entre le 25 décembre et le 5 janvier, Linode a subi plus d'une centaine d'attaques par déni de service contre toutes les parties importantes de notre infrastructure, certaines perturbant gravement le service pour des centaines de milliers de clients Linode. J'aimerais revenir sur ma précédente mise à jour en expliquant comment nous avons été attaqués et ce que nous faisons pour éviter que cela ne se reproduise.
En gros, l'attaquant s'est déplacé vers le haut de notre pile dans l'ordre suivant :
- Attaques de la couche 7 ("400 Bad Request") contre nos sites web publics
- Attaques volumétriques contre nos sites web, nos serveurs de noms faisant autorité et d'autres services publics
- Attaques volumétriques contre l'infrastructure du réseau Linode
- Attaques volumétriques contre l'infrastructure réseau de notre fournisseur de services de colocation
La plupart des attaques étaient de simples attaques volumétriques. Une attaque volumétrique est le type le plus courant d'attaque par déni de service distribué (DDoS), dans laquelle un canon de trafic indésirable est dirigé vers une adresse IP, éliminant la victime visée de l'internet. C'est l'équivalent virtuel de provoquer intentionnellement un embouteillage à l'aide d'une flotte de voitures de location, et l'omniprésence de ces types d'attaques a causé des centaines de milliards de dollars de pertes économiques à l'échelle mondiale.
Généralement, Linode voit plusieurs douzaines d'attaques volumétriques visant nos clients chaque jour. Cependant, ces attaques n'affectent presque jamais le réseau Linode dans son ensemble grâce à un outil que nous utilisons pour nous protéger, appelé " remote-triggered blackholing". Lorsqu'une adresse IP est "blackholée", l'Internet accepte collectivement de supprimer tout le trafic destiné à cette adresse IP, empêchant ainsi le bon et le mauvais trafic de l'atteindre. Pour les réseaux de contenu comme Linode, qui possèdent des centaines de milliers d'adresses IP, le blackholing est une arme émoussée mais cruciale de notre arsenal, qui nous permet de "couper un doigt pour sauver la main", c'est-à-dire de sacrifier le client qui est attaqué afin de maintenir les autres en ligne.
Le blackholing ne constitue pas un moyen d'atténuation efficace dans une circonstance évidente mais importante : lorsque l'IP ciblée - par exemple, un élément d'infrastructure essentiel - ne peut pas être mise hors ligne sans entraîner d'autres personnes dans sa chute. Les exemples qui viennent généralement à l'esprit sont les "serveurs de serveurs", tels que les points d'extrémité ou les serveurs DNS. API les points d'extrémité ou les serveurs DNS, qui constituent la base d'autres infrastructures. Si bon nombre des attaques visaient nos "serveurs de serveurs", les plus difficiles à limiter se sont avérées être celles qui visaient directement notre infrastructure réseau et celle de nos fournisseurs de services de colocation.
Adresses secondaires
Les attaques lancées contre notre infrastructure réseau étaient relativement simples, mais il n'en était pas de même pour les atténuer. En tant qu'artefact historique, nous segmentons les clients en sous-réseaux /24 individuels, ce qui signifie que nos routeurs doivent avoir une adresse IP "secondaire" à l'intérieur de chacun de ces sous-réseaux pour que les clients puissent l'utiliser comme passerelle de réseau.
Au fil du temps, nos routeurs ont accumulé des centaines de ces adresses secondaires, chacune étant une cible potentielle pour une attaque. Bien entendu, ce n'était pas la première fois que nos routeurs étaient attaqués directement. En général, des mesures spéciales sont prises pour envoyer des annonces de trous noirs à nos réseaux en amont sans faire de trous noirs dans notre cœur de réseau, ce qui permet d'arrêter l'attaque tout en permettant au trafic des clients de se dérouler comme d'habitude. Cependant, nous n'étions pas préparés à un scénario dans lequel quelqu'un aurait attaqué rapidement et de manière imprévisible plusieurs dizaines d'adresses IP secondaires différentes sur nos routeurs. Et ce, pour plusieurs raisons. Tout d'abord, l'atténuation des attaques sur les équipements de réseau nécessitait une intervention manuelle de la part des ingénieurs réseau, ce qui était lent et source d'erreurs. Deuxièmement, nos fournisseurs en amont ne pouvaient accepter qu'un nombre limité d'annonces de trous noirs afin de limiter les dommages potentiels en cas d'erreur.
Après plusieurs jours de jeu du chat et de la souris avec l'attaquant, nous avons pu travailler avec nos fournisseurs de colocation pour qu'ils mettent en place des trous noirs sur toutes nos adresses secondaires ou qu'ils laissent tomber le trafic à la périphérie des réseaux de leurs fournisseurs de transit, là où la mise en place de trous noirs n'était pas possible.
Connexions croisées
Les attaques visant nos fournisseurs de services de colocation étaient tout aussi simples, mais encore plus difficiles à atténuer. Une fois que nos routeurs n'ont plus pu être attaqués directement, nos partenaires de colocation et leurs fournisseurs de transit sont devenus la cible logique suivante - en particulier, leurs connexions croisées. Une connexion cro isée peut généralement être considérée comme le lien physique entre deux routeurs sur l'internet. Chaque côté de ce lien physique a besoin d'une adresse IP pour que les deux routeurs puissent communiquer entre eux, et ce sont ces adresses IP qui ont été visées.
Comme dans le cas de notre propre infrastructure, cette méthode d'attaque n'était pas nouvelle en soi. Ce qui a rendu cette méthode si efficace, c'est la rapidité et l'imprévisibilité des attaques. Dans nombre de nos centres de données, des dizaines d'adresses IP différentes au sein des réseaux en amont ont été attaquées, ce qui a exigé un niveau de concentration et de coordination difficile à maintenir entre nos partenaires de colocation et leurs fournisseurs de transit. Notre panne la plus longue - plus de 30 heures à Atlanta - peut être directement attribuée à de fréquentes ruptures de communication entre le personnel de Linode et des personnes qui se trouvaient parfois à quatre degrés de distance de nous. Nous avons finalement été en mesure de fermer complètement ce vecteur d'attaque après que des fournisseurs de services de transit obstinés ont finalement reconnu que leur infrastructure était attaquée et ont réussi à mettre en place des mesures pour arrêter les attaques.
Enseignements tirés
Sur le plan personnel, nous sommes gênés qu'une telle chose ait pu se produire, et nous avons tiré des leçons difficiles de cette expérience.
Première leçon : ne pas dépendre des intermédiaires Rétrospectivement, nous pensons que les pannes plus longues auraient pu être évitées si nous n'avions pas dépendu de nos partenaires de colocation pour le transit IP. Il y a deux raisons à cela : Premièrement, dans plusieurs cas, nous avons été amenés à croire que nos fournisseurs de colocation avaient tout simplement plus de capacité de transit IP qu'ils n'en avaient en réalité. À plusieurs reprises, le volume du trafic d'attaque dirigé vers Linode était si important que nos fournisseurs de colocation n'ont pas eu d'autre choix que de dé-peer temporairement avec le réseau Linode jusqu'à ce que les attaques cessent. Deuxièmement, l'atténuation réussie de certaines attaques plus nuancées a nécessité l'implication directe d'ingénieurs réseau seniors de différents fournisseurs de niveau 1. À 4 heures du matin, un week-end férié, nos partenaires de colocation sont devenus une barrière supplémentaire et inutile entre nous et les personnes qui pouvaient résoudre nos problèmes.
Deuxième leçon : absorber des attaques plus importantes La stratégie de gestion de la capacité de Linode pour le transit IP est simple : lorsque notre pic d'utilisation quotidien commence à approcher 50 % de notre capacité globale, il est temps d'acquérir plus de liens. Cette stratégie est standard pour les réseaux d'opérateurs, mais nous comprenons maintenant qu'elle est inadéquate pour les réseaux de contenu comme le nôtre. Pour donner des chiffres concrets, nos petits réseaux de centres de données ont une capacité totale de transit IP de 40 Gbps. Cela peut sembler beaucoup pour beaucoup d'entre vous, mais dans le contexte d'un DDoS de 80 Gbps qui ne peut pas être bloqué, n'avoir que 20 Gbps de marge de manœuvre nous laisse avec une perte de paquets paralysante pendant toute la durée de l'attaque.
Troisième leçon : informer les clients de ce qui se passe Il est important que nous reconnaissions nos échecs, et notre manque de communication détaillée au cours des premiers jours de l'attaque a été un grave échec. Seules les personnes ayant une connaissance approfondie de la situation peuvent fournir des mises à jour techniques détaillées en temps de crise. En général, ces personnes sont aussi celles qui luttent contre les incendies. Après que les choses se sont calmées et que nous avons passé en revue nos communications publiques, nous sommes arrivés à la conclusion que notre peur de mal formuler quelque chose et de provoquer une panique injustifiée nous a conduits à parler de manière plus ambiguë que nous ne l'aurions dû dans nos mises à jour de l'état d'avancement de la situation. C'était une erreur et, à l'avenir, une personne technique désignée sera chargée de communiquer en détail lors d'événements majeurs comme celui-ci. En outre, notre page d'état permet désormais aux clients d'être alertés des problèmes de service par courrier électronique et par SMS via le lien "S'abonner aux mises à jour".
Notre avenir est plus brillant que notre passé
En gardant ces leçons à l'esprit, nous aimerions que vous sachiez comment nous les mettons en pratique. Tout d'abord, la partie la plus facile : nous avons atténué la menace d'attaques contre nos serveurs publics en mettant en œuvre des mesures d'atténuation des attaques DDoS. Nos serveurs de noms sont désormais protégés par Cloudflare, et nos sites web par de puissants dispositifs commerciaux d'épuration du trafic. En outre, nous avons veillé à ce que les techniques d'atténuation d'urgence mises en place pendant les attaques des fêtes de fin d'année soient permanentes.
En soi, ces mesures nous permettent d'être confiants dans le fait que les types d'attaques qui ont eu lieu pendant les vacances ne peuvent pas se reproduire. Néanmoins, nous devons faire plus. C'est pourquoi je suis heureux d'annoncer aujourd'hui que Linode va revoir toute la stratégie de connectivité de notre centre de données, en acheminant 200 gigabits de capacité de transit et de peering depuis les principaux points de présence régionaux vers chacun de nos sites.
Voici un aperçu des améliorations d'infrastructure à venir dans notre centre de données de Newark, qui sera le premier à recevoir ces mises à niveau de capacité.
La tête d'affiche de cette architecture est constituée par les réseaux de transport optique que nous avons déjà commencé à construire. Ces réseaux fourniront des chemins totalement diversifiés vers certains des plus importants PoP de la région, donnant à Linode l'accès à des centaines d'options d'opérateurs différents et à des milliers de partenaires de peering directs. Par rapport à notre architecture existante, les avantages de cette mise à niveau sont évidents. Nous prendrons le contrôle de l'ensemble de notre infrastructure, jusqu'à la limite de l'internet. Cela signifie que, plutôt que de dépendre d'intermédiaires pour le transit IP, nous serons en partenariat direct avec les opérateurs dont nous dépendons pour le service.
En outre, Linode va quintupler la quantité de bande passante dont nous disposons actuellement, ce qui nous permettra d'absorber des attaques DDoS extrêmement importantes jusqu'à ce qu'elles soient correctement atténuées. Au fur et à mesure de l'augmentation de la taille des attaques, cette architecture s'adaptera rapidement pour répondre à leurs demandes sans nécessiter de nouveaux investissements majeurs.
Dernières paroles
Enfin, des excuses sincères s'imposent. En tant qu'entreprise hébergeant des infrastructures critiques pour nos clients, on nous confie la responsabilité de maintenir ces infrastructures en ligne. Nous espérons que la transparence et la réflexion prospective de ce billet nous permettront de regagner une partie de cette confiance. Nous tenons également à vous remercier pour votre compréhension et votre soutien. Beaucoup d'entre nous ont vu leurs vacances gâchées par ces attaques incessantes, et il est difficile d'essayer d'expliquer cela à nos proches. Le soutien de la communauté nous a vraiment aidés. Nous vous encourageons à poser vos questions ou à faire part de vos commentaires ci-dessous.
Commentaires (67)
Thanks for your great work. My VPS was running well during these days.
Good postmortem analysis – thanks for being candid.
Thanks for being honest and forthcoming about this and the issues you addressed-both on the technical and PR sides-as well as the steps you are taking to better your company.
Kimo.
You people are awesome and have great stamina. We are satisfied customer from Pakistan.
I’ll never stop buying linodes!!
You guys are are rock stars in my book, and I appreciate the transparency. More tech companies need to live and breath that these days, or else find themselves losing the game to cheaper competitors.
While I haven’t been a fan of how some past incidents were handled, I still give Linode a 5-star rating. Good job!
Things happen. Those of us who network or sysadmin know that when youre fighting fires and figuring out what is going on and fielding calls from angry clients the last thing you have time for is updating everyone. Hell…you may not even know what all is going on for a couple days or more with huge attacks.
This is a good postmortem and your ability to learn and adapt and invest in your own infrastructure is why I love and continue to be a Linode fanatic.
Keep it up you guys. Sorry Christmas was such a bummer.
May the Network be with you!
Can’t thank the Linode team enough for your dedication. The livelyhood of thousands rest in your hands, I feel like this whole event further proves how well qualified you guys are to be doing what you’re doing.
The only part of this that really bothers me is the idea that if I get a DDOS, Linode is just going to blackhole me, and me alone. Doesn’t that mean that I have to give in to ransom demands from attackers?
I really appreciate this. We were waiting for this to take the decision if we will stay in linode or move away, and we are staying.
I strongly agree that being more transparent would have helped a LOT.
I’d like to know, though, when is scheduled the above change in the rest of the datacenters. I’m not using newark right now and would like to know when my datacenter will have it : )
Thanks a lot,
Rodrigo
@Mogden – for people who are attacked regularly, we suggest Cloudflare or others in the DDoS protection market. I’m not sure what the future holds on this subject, but rest assured that it really bothers us too.
Thanks for the update. Any time frame for other datacenters to be updated? My linodes are in Atlanta and we suffered almost three days of downtime.
Cheers
We had 2 linodes, one of them in Atlanta datacenter. We have not experience any issues during holidays, but I was worried though. Thanks for the explanation and amazing work. Honestly hope your family can understand the situation.
Amazing company!
Like Rodrigo, this is a huge thing to us. I was honestly feeling that it was going the usual corporate way with silence and deniability, just waiting for the furore to die down. It really makes a difference to hear not only the details of the response/mitigation activities, which we appreciate, but also acknowledgement of the position we were put into when communication was sparse.
It goes a long way.
Thanks again.
Mark.
Great to hear we could help you get protected.
swiner@cloudflare.com
@mogden – if your the one being ddos’d then you deserve to be blackholed. I dont pay for my linodes for you to be targetted with a ddos and mine linodes taken down!!
Thank you for the analysis and a break down of what took place, and most importantly, thank you for being honest with customers!
Cheers!
I’m obviously a huge fan of Linode, but I wonder if this attack will force them to re-evaluate their “3 strikes” policy towards hosted sites which come under DDoS attack. As this attack should have taught them, it’s indiscriminate, and there’s not a whole lot a small website owner can do to mitigate it. We rely on Linode to be able to deal with this, and punishing the victim is hardly a fair solution.
And attacks started minutes after posting updates. http://status.linode.com/incidents/mkcgnmjmnnln
I’ve a message for Linode especially Chris, please invest more and more on infrastructure if you want to stay in the game otherwise, you’ll be overtaken by heavily funded startups in this domain. We know you have innovative mind and excellent technology but this alone is not sufficient for you to win in this domain. I like performance and flexibility of Linode but moved to DO just because I needed to setup my stuff at Japan and Singapore data-centers and Japan DC is sold out. 3 out of 6 locations are sold out and you are not yet expanding? How will you compete?
Come out of your box and look at your neighbors. It was painful to move to Digital Ocean for me but I had to take this decision. I am still using Linode for some of my stuff will continue using it until I need redundancy or you expand.
There’s nothing that I love more than the amount of technical detail that you provide to us on these cases, and even with some minor updates.
I love being a Linode customer, no DDoS will get that away from me 😀
Thanks for this post, Alex. This was a rough period for everyone involved and affected but I am extremely impressed by Linode making the effort to hopefully prevent the same scenario from happening again.
There were many lessons to be learned from this – both for Linode and for customers.
Linode appears to have realized what they needed to do and that is fantastic. Instead of saying sh*t happens and going about business as usual you are actively working to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Well done.
We (customers) need to cover our own bases too. For anything critical or even slightly important you need to have a plan in place in the event of a Linode outage (regardless of the reason).
I have now split some of my services and are far better placed to recover quickly in the event something like this were to happen again. Linode had always been so reliable that I got complacent. Lesson definitely learned.
In my case my costs have now increased as I am now paying other providers in addition to what I have and will continue to pay Linode, but the ability to keep some important services online is worth it.
Thank you to everyone at Linode for your hard work and for looking out for your customers.
Some of our big clients suffered with the downtime on those days but, with several VPS and more online each day, we never accepted any offer from others players. This kind of behaviour make us confident with the team and give us peace of mind that we’re in good hands.
Thank you for the update and respect with your customers.
Hostcare Internet
Thank you for being open, good luck with your new defences and I hope that you catch up on your family time!
Linode user here. Thanks for the transparency. I wasn’t directly affected but I appreciate the openness on the issue. It’s a welcome change to most companies now. I plan to keep using Linode just because of how cool you all handled the situation. Keep up the good work!
Cloudflare will probably help with your DDoS but they aren’t infallible as any other vendor.. But what happens when they get hit really hard themselves? I’d recommend getting a second DNS provider.
See Also: https://blog.thousandeyes.com/ultradns-ddos-affects-major-web-services/
https://blog.thousandeyes.com/ultradns-outage-october-2015/
I was beginning to wonder if such a note would arrive. The explanation is useful and I’m feeling as though things are safer than before.
Thank you for being transparent about what happened. That was a truly hellish attack. Getting slammed with a sophisticated and highly targeted 80 Gbit DDoS is stressful for any network admin and I’m glad that Linode succeeded in weathering the storm.
I am really impressed with way you have handled this whole situation, your company’s honesty and explanation is more than anyone could have expected. I’m sure there were many hours invested, not only in locating and fixing the problem on top of adding the double protection; but even in your letter to your customers. I hope all your customers are as loyal to your company as you have been with them. Way to step up your game, keep up the good work. Wishes for much more success……
Thank you very much for the detailed breakdown of what went wrong and what you plan to do to prevent this in the future. I have to say though, technical reasons and justifications aside, Linode has a lot to learn in regards to communication. I know you acknowledge that in your blog post but for many people (myself included) it’s too little way too late. It’s taken you 30 days to write a blog post that could’ve been written in hours. For 30 days people have been sitting on the fence wondering exactly what you guys are doing and whether or not they should jump ship. For many people (myself included), the absence of this response and the overall feeling that it has been so long since you said you were going to provide an update, that honestly you were just going to push this to the side and hope it went away, has directly contributed to Linode losing a significant amount of business from us.
I don’t want my response to turn into some Linode bashing post, but I want you to be aware that your failure to provide sufficient information and responses is the biggest problem here – for me, at least. It hit your reputation hard and caused us to lose a significant amount of trust in your company and services. DDoS attacks happen, and we know you guys were working extremely hard to deal with those. You reminded us often enough in your status updates. What we really wanted to know was that the worst was over and that you identified your weaknesses and were addressing those. The longer we had to wait for this information, the less trust we had/have in you.
I’d like to end this on a more positive note. All of the above said, your services are fantastic overall and I’d love to come back to Linode in the future, once you’ve performed all of the changes you have mentioned here. Just please, improve on your communications!
Long-time Linode customer…I wasn’t affected by the outage, but I’m really glad you’ve taken the time to write up what happened. Thanks for being transparent and generally awesome.
Alex, this caught my attention: “… requiring a level of focus and coordination between our colocation partners and their transit providers which was difficult to maintain.”
How did you structure this communication? What tools / technologies did you use or tried to use?
This is a nicely put article. I only have amazing things to say about Linode and its staff. Awesome post!
As a long time customer and a fellow network administrator I just wanted to say that I do really appreciate all your hard work. Respect.
Sounds an exciting project Alex, good luck!
Any news on continued security farces at Linode? and ‘The Best Practices not invented here’ approach.. For example to reset 2FA
—
Should you need us to disable your Two-Factor Authentication, the following information is required:
An image of the front and back of the payment card on file, which clearly shows both the last 6 digits and owner of the card.
An image of the front and back of the matching government-issued photo ID.
—
A) Photoshop CC in 2 mins, you have no idea what my CC should look like.
B) You can’t verify government ID so say 5 minute photoshop.
Woohoo for 2FA, known as 2 f… alls
Thanks for the update, and letting us know that things will be better handled in the future. Both technically and on the communication front.
Any idea who attacked and why?
Linode – you are the best. Thanks for your service.
Thanks for the update. As a long time linode customer, it is appreciated.
For you guys complaining about being kicked out in case of a DDoS, I recommend getting DDoS protection for your linodes. There are a lot of cheap options right there that can be integrated easily.
Some one recommended CloudFlare and they are great. You can also look at Sucuri:
http://sucuri.net/website-firewall/
Or Incapsula:
https://incapsula.com
Both great products and solutions. Stay safe!
200g? this years ddos was 800gbps…
good postmortem. now can you explain what happened with the “leaked” credentials and the fact that we had to reset the passwords.
thank you
These attacks could happen to anyone and any provider. Keep up the good work!
Great article and the right way to handle these kinds of problems. Transparency and constructive retros are the way to go.
I think you did great job considering the size of the attack. That’s why continue to use Linode for my virtual machines. Thank you for your support and keep up the good work.
Thank you for the clear and concise explanation. I look forward to you rolling out your upgrades and continue to be a happy customer with Linode.
Cisco routers, seriously?
Juniper high end routers take a gigantic steaming dump all over Cisco.
@Jake that’s essentially what ASRs are 😉
If you want to do it on the cheap side and be safe, get some cheaper / best equipment from huawei (give them a call). You might think the Chinese cannot be better than Cisco, but Cisco is now also made in China. Also I’m sorry, but you need some Ddos protection (expensive). You cannot just nullroute your costumers… you have to protect them. If the cheap OVH company can do it, why can’t you…
Looks like you guys need to hire someone with real experience in network engineering (worked at ISP level), not just some cheap undergraduate out of university.
You need to rely more on anycast, have reserved capacity, etc.
After reading this, I would not host my sites on linode. You guys look amateur (sorry).
I appreciate this honest insight, but I’ve moved back to a local server since these attacks made access to my Linode difficult or impossible, and always-on, always-accessible was my main reason for moving to Linode in the first place. Sorry, and better luck in the future.
I like the transparency, even delayed. I like that you’re taking steps. I DON’T like that your “security appliances” block ALL ICMP packets including the “Packet Too Big” messages required for path MTU discovery and breaking my ability to access the Manager over my VPN.
Buying blended internet direct from your colo provider is a bad idea (as it seems you have learned the hardway)
You should be getting your transit direct from diverse carriers… this is networking 101
Love the armchair quarterbacks giving their input. Now, for you QBs, where is your massive company you are running and making decisions and learning lessons from? Oh you don’t have one and you don’t work for one? Sit back and let Linode do their job, they are by far the best provider out there. The cost of this type of infrastructure is gigantic and you wanna-be QBs have no idea what it takes to run a business.
Great job Linode. I know I’ve made the right choice by using you.
Excellent. I knew you guys were “on it”. I really appreciate the detail you provided.
Thank you for releasing this honest and detailed report
Regarding CloudFlare, did you shop around for any other DNS DDOS protection services? The reason I ask is because CloudFlare happily caches too many dodgy websites. Some sources that may be of interest:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2015/10/12/certificate-authorities-issue-hundreds-of-deceptive-ssl-certificates-to-fraudsters.html (large number of phishing certificates issued by CloudFlare)
http://www.crimeflare.com (non-profit that investigates CloudFlare and its customers)
I appreciate the update, but i find a bit late too.
Also i don’t really get why Mr. Forster signing this post?
And don’t get me wrong, i have nothing against him, i don’t doubt his intentions or knowledge.
But i expected a statement from someone from the top of the food chain . This was also one of my main problems when the events happened, its like nobody cares from the top management, until one of the engineers realized that they can’t be silent anymore.
I still have that feeling, and is pretty alarming .
It’s time to move to IPv6-only internet. Attacking a single address will become impractical if a host can have millions of them changed automatically in an unpredictable way.
Appreciate the info.
It is a minor point, I know, but status.linode.com should either be un-available over https, or have its own cert.
try this in chrome…
https://status.linode.com
Thanks Linode Team for acknowledging your challenges, and courageously taking adaptive actions 🙂
Great job! Didn’t know such a story ongoing since my site was on all the time. Really appreciate all the hard work of LINODE support team!
Thank you for the very interesting update. Best of luck for the future.
I’m also quite curious on who could benefit from such attacks in the first place.
I am using Cloud Flare to protect the blog from DDOS attack, is there any other best application available to replace cloudflare? Is there a way to stop the DDOS or brute force attack for wordpress sites?
Great write up & good to see such honesty and transparency. I think it is important for readers of this to understand that DDoS attacks can affect anyone at any time on any host. Obviously when you are on the receiving end of a nullroute it is not nice, but It’s important to note though that providers do not want for you to have downtime, but if a DDoS directed at you is affecting other customers and you don’t have some form of mitigation, there is seldom any other option than to take this action. As they said, ‘cut off a finger to save the hand’. I’m quite sure that if someone else is being DDoS’d that you would prefer to see them nullrouted than have your own service impacted, so that has to work both ways in my eyes.
It’s important to look at the issue objectively – DDoS attacks are not going to go away and really if you have concerns around protection then this does mean paying for a mitigation service, especially if outages will be more costly than the monthly sub.
@Srinivas – You’ll need a CloudFlare business plan for DDoS attack mitigation. Simply being behind CloudFlare on a free plan won’t give you this protection, and there isn’t another service that I am aware of that provides free DDoS protection without at least having some other paid service. Keep in mind that CloudFlare isn’t an application, but rather a service which is totally separate from your Wordpress sites. If you want to run something locally to stop a brute force attack then have a look at a plugin such as Wordfence, which is very effective. Another good plugin is iQ Block Country which uses GeoLocation – you can lock down your back end to whitelisted countries only. Plugins are not infallible, but they definitely add extra security. Another good way to stop brute force attacks is by not using obvious account names for the administration area of your site…lots of tools will try to brute force on usernames like ‘admin’ – as with any security approach, it’s all about the layers!
As a final note, I do always find it interesting when posts like this attract the critics who dish out ‘advice’ about how X and Y should have already been done, or that they are amateur, etc. I would like to know which fairytale jobs they have at companies that have everything 100% perfect with 100% uptime and 0% chance of outages or attacks…
Fair play Linode, tip of the cap.
Thank you for your honesty and transparency. Very very good post. Thank you for your hard work during the attacks even on holidays. Keep pushing Linode Team!
yeah thank you also for your transparency. I remember what happened, evthg gave tears and I think, as many people, we planned to move to another company. Even some days ago, I compared with AWS, reading their doc for RDS, EC2, ELB, S3 etc, but Linode, even with much less available options and possibilities if we compare to amazon, Linode stay for us a better company, with a great support and reactive, providing faster and cheaper solutions.
I started with Linode 4 years ago, I loved the service and I am not going to go away from you guys. I know how painful firefighting could be, thanks to your team for working so hard. And please do everything that could prevent this from repeating.
Hello,
on the article you said following
“our nameservers are now protected by Cloudflare, and our websites are now protected by powerful commercial traffic scrubbing appliances.”
but seems it is not anymore. did you moved away from cloudflare protection? if yes then why? many hosting giants now rely on cloudflare protection.
Thank you for this update and the recent additional high memory and $5 options.