
Ask HN: What is it with the recent DDoS attacks on Linode? - znowi
Linode has been experiencing a wave of DDoS attacks in the last few days. I&#x27;ve noted connectivity issues at Newark and London datacenters. DDoS isn&#x27;t something of a novelty, but being a Linode customer for several years now I don&#x27;t recall having that much of a problem with availability before. Is this attack of any special significance?<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;status.linode.com&#x2F;
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reefoctopus
[Just posted to status.linode.com]

In progress - An update from Linode about the recent DDoS attacks Dec 31,
22:45 UTC Scheduled - I’d like to share some updates about the recent DDoS
attacks.

I am one of several network engineers at Linode who have been working around
the clock on DDoS mitigation. While things are stable, I would like to take a
moment to publicly address the large and frequent DDoS attacks that we have
been receiving since Christmas Day.

It has become evident in the past two days that a bad actor is purchasing
large amounts of botnet capacity in an attempt to significantly damage
Linode’s business. The following is a partial list of attacks we have received
in no particular order:

\- Multiple volumetric attacks simultaneously directed toward all of our
authoritative nameservers, causing DNS hosting outages

\- Multiple volumetric attacks simultaneously directed toward all of our
public-facing websites, causing Linode Manager outages

\- Layer 7 (“400 bad request”) attacks toward our web and application servers,
causing Linode Manager outages

\- Large volumetric attacks toward our colocation provider’s upstream
interconnection points, overwhelming the router control planes and causing
significant congestion/packet loss

\- Large volumetric attacks toward Linode network infrastructure, overwhelming
the router control planes and causing significant congestion/packet loss

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 providers, to prevent future attacks.

Once these attacks stop, we plan to share a complete technical explanation
about what has been happening. Additionally, we will be announcing the details
of an ongoing project to significantly improve our internet connectivity and
resiliency.

We would like to apologize for the lack of detail in some of our recent
status-page updates. Please know that we are dedicating all resources from
multiple departments to stopping these attacks. We acknowledge the amount of
downtime we’ve been experiencing is completely unacceptable, and we appreciate
the understanding and support we have received over the past several days. We
will share more information as our investigation continues.

Alex Forster Network Engineer at Linode

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brianwawok
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10797795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10797795)

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noir_lord
It's becoming a major issue for us, if it's not resolved by Saturday we are
pushing the big red button, we can ride out a couple more days because most of
the stuff we write/run for clients is LoB for SME's and everyone is shutdown
for the holidays pretty much, after that not so much and it's going to be
grim.

~~~
m0v_eax
Why put all your eggs in one basket anyway?

~~~
noir_lord
Frankly? Because its worked fine til now, each client has their own VPS and
linode has been very reliable for 6 years for me and 3 years since I started
company.

But yeah I should have and did know better :(.

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reefoctopus
The attack is clearly of significance though Linode has not made much
information public. Many have been told that the attack is bigger and better
organized than the typical DDOS attack. There have been multiple methods of
attack, and when one is mitigated they change to a different one. Some have
speculated that a competitor may be behind it. Others have speculated that the
perpetrators may be demanding a ransom to stop.

I've been following the issue closely, and that is all I know. Linode support
has been careful to avoid answering questions like: "How long will this last?"
and "What are you doing to prevent it?"

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adamzoz
Same have been a customer virtually from the start, all my important stuff is
with AWS these days but there are still a few minor things at Linode and its
getting annoying.

They will come back better from this thou. Its sad to see their business going
partly down the drain, will be a huge hit.

If I had anything of use at Linode right now then I would be long gone, not
many businesses could afford a week like this.

