
Access Denied to Apple.com - kozkozkoz
http://www.apple.com/
======
markchristian
Someone who works for Apple — someone who is probably a lot like you and me —
is having a really shitty night. So, I am sending good luck vibes towards
Cupertino right now.

Godspeed, Apple friends! ️

~~~
icpmacdo
If it has been offline for 1 hour now, do you think it is tens or hundreds of
thousands of dollars is sales that were not processed in the timeframe.

~~~
hanlec
The store was in read-only mode to prep for the new iPhones so the sales loss
is already accounted for.

As a side note (and speculation), as compared with other online stores, I
don't think the Apple store has the same risks as the other stores (the fact
you don't buy the Mac directly from Apple doesn't really affect their
revenue).

------
userbinator
I've seen this same style of error message before. It's the AkamaiGhost CDN.
(Look at the Server: header in the response.)

I suppose you could say the server has given up the ghost...

Googling "AkamaiGhost 403" shows that other sites have experienced the same
problems with them before in the past, so I wouldn't particularly blame Apple
for this.

~~~
cdv2101
this guy know what's up.

------
legohead
A moment of silence for our fellow web developer/sysadmin who is on-call...

~~~
confluence
From now until his death, he will rest in peace no longer.

~~~
hanlec
If it gets back online in time, it'll be a story to be told. If not, then :-(

------
jvolkman
I've seen this error before from other sites and it seems to be generated by
Akamai rather than the apple.com origin. Does anyone with Akamai experience
know under what conditions this message would be returned? Did someone at
apple accidentally ACL off the planet?

~~~
veb
I posted my comment before to the wrong commenter, but: I'm interested in
their References -- it looks like each hit is a new hash, so they store that
so they can refer to it. I don't know much about this side of stuff so it'll
be interesting to know why they do that, or what the upside is of doing it
that way...

~~~
kevan
Akamai does indeed give unique reference codes for errors like these. There's
a management interface where you can look up more info on what happened for
each code, but in my experience lookup time is proportional to the time since
the error happened.

------
stevecalifornia
Here's my guess:

Apple is using Akamai's cloud security service called Kona. They (Apple or
their Kona team) pushed a bad config up and now that they know it's a bad
config they are pushing a fix-- but it takes 45 minutes to replicate out to
all the Akamai edge servers.

I think it's Kona because the 403 Access Denied and the Akamai ref number.
Also, I use the same service and always live in fear of something like this
happening and taking 45 minutes to undo. There _is_ a staging option...

~~~
chinathrow
45min? And people pay for intervals that slow?

~~~
cdv2101
marketing magic, when you got ATS and only need smart people to set it up in
any way you want (yahoo fucking does it) and still go to akamai

~~~
stephenr
ATS = Apache Traffic Server I assume?

I still wonder why large companies continue to rely on third-party CDN's like
this. It's hardly rocket science to operate a global network of reverse proxy
cache servers, particularly when you only have to do it for your own network
(i.e. no customer issues).

------
jdmaurer
Crap, now I can't stare at pictures of the 6s, wondering if it will be
6s-ful... #applepunsfordays

On a more serious note, it seems strange they wouldn't have failover
environments for just such occasions... Maybe @Too is on to something, and
this is a new way for big companies to drive traffic to their sites prior to a
big launch. Genius.

~~~
mholt
That pun actually made me laugh though. (Impressed that you turned a number
and a letter into a full word pun.)

------
arn
Apple usually takes their store down prior to a big event (iPhone 6s pre-
orders).

This is the first major event since they integrated the store into their
regular website (rather than having the store.apple.com subdomain) Clearly,
this is a mistake as they are deploying all the new pre-ordering pages for the
iPhone 6s.

------
gedy
You are supposed to use the Apple app, not that old web stuff.

------
ab
The white "Access Denied" page is to help you empathize with Jony Ive, still
trapped in a white room after all these years.

[https://www.change.org/p/apple-free-jony-ive-from-his-
white-...](https://www.change.org/p/apple-free-jony-ive-from-his-white-room)

------
Watabou
It's back up for me.

------
grumpykitten
[http://images.apple.com/](http://images.apple.com/) appears to be still be up
though

------
rebootthesystem
"Siri, can you kill the Apple website"

(oh, shit!)

------
0942v8653
For anyone else who got here late:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20150912044113/http://apple.com](http://web.archive.org/web/20150912044113/http://apple.com)

------
whitlock
Someone violated read-only Friday.

------
gfsn54nsf
Thus operational phase 2 begins...

------
secfirstmd
Awaits first journalist to write a glowing story about how "Apple has
revolutionised the 'Access Denied' page.

~~~
ewzimm
When Steve Jobs invented the computer, he envisioned a device which was
accessible to anyone, a device to empower revolutionary magical thinking about
the possibilities of access. But he also knew the limits of the networks
developed by the establishment gray box technology industry and sought to
imbue those networks with communication that would speak different, in a way
they would understand. Along with Sir Jony Ive, he reinvented the "Access
Denied" page by removing the skeuomorphic constraints, distilling them into a
flat "Access Denied" message which spoke to everyone, empowering their
engagement with their restricted access to unlock unlimited creative
potential.

------
kozkozkoz
The same moment when I was going to buy the new iphone 6s

~~~
brunorsini
Yeah, pre orders start in just over 2 hours. This might be related to that

------
verroq
Who cares?

~~~
a3voices
I used to do pager duty for a large consumer-facing company, so this is
amusing to me.

------
Animats
Does this take down any important service, or just access to Apple's corporate
web site?

~~~
lukashed
If you consider their store an important service, then yes.

------
cozzyd
The most walled of walled gardens.

------
krammer
Funny to find this on the front page on HN, just got notified by Hooks app!
Lol

~~~
kozkozkoz
Me too!

~~~
krammer
Yeah, this app is really real-time, got you to the frontpage on HN!

~~~
kozkozkoz
Yeah, I've posted just after I received a notification from Hooks :) Got lucky

------
borski
Looks like iMessage is down too... someone is having a horrendous night.

~~~
eridius
Works fine here. I think it's on your end.

------
calin2k
also a reddit discussion about it
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10207403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10207403)

------
github-cat
The service seems back to normal now.

------
corndoge
Killed off the front page as soon as it hit >100 score. Went from being #1 to
#148 within ten seconds.

------
bentruyman
It's back up

------
cdv2101
It's back up now, but

RIP CDN / Traffic Management team @ apple.

------
abalashov
p0wned?

------
9ScoskEbci
Works fine for me. What's the problem here?

------
NovaS1X
Certainly this is the work of Microsoft working with Aliens.

------
dujiulun2006
Now that's what we call innovation.

------
sergers
How's this front page material on HN...

Oh no, apple.com is unavailable - breaking news, affects noone?

~~~
dclowd9901
Not for nothing, it's a pretty rare occurrence to see a triple-a company with
a white page error on its home domain, like seeing a whale or something.

~~~
sergers
its not the first time for this to occur (to other sites and apple earliar
this year atleast) and has been answered by
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10207316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10207316)

akamai issue and the hash is a time stamp

------
Too
zzzzz, just another pr stunt to pretend the demand is high. Just like hiring
actors to stand in line outside the apple store every now and then. Or some
sysadmin accidentally forgot to click enter somewhere. Nothing to see, move
along.

