I’ve just posted about this on the OpenDNS System Status site, but the OpenDNS.com website (and blog.opendns.com, etc.) were unavailable due to authoritative DNS failure for about 90 minutes earlier today, starting around 1pm PT (21:00 UTC). Here are the details.
I will repeat myself on a few key points.
First, OpenDNS’s speedy, reliable DNS was not affected. Our website is treated separately from our DNS, for this reason among others.
Second, the cause of the failure was a Denial of Service (DOS) attack on EveryDNS. David Ulevitch, CEO of OpenDNS, also owns and operates EveryDNS, but the two companies are separate. OpenDNS has used EveryDNS services, although we’ve now spread the authoritative DNS for OpenDNS more broadly as a result of this incident.
Third, the DOS attack on EveryDNS continues. It’s being actively worked on, as you can imagine. As we learn more, we’ll share it in this post, since I know other EveryDNS customers are interested, too.
Update: As of 9:30pm PT, December 1 (05:30 UTC December 2), EveryDNS is recovering. Still under attack, but mitigated. Status report on the EveryDNS home page. I’ll leave it to EveryDNS for updates from here on.
Note: you can bookmark or save our OpenDNS System Status site at http://208.67.219.60/ just for rare events like this, whether there is an authoritative or recursive DNS issue.
Peter Cooper
Yes, more updates will be great
Two places this is being discussed so far:
http://giza.livejournal.com/372549.html
http://www.petercooper.co.uk/archives/001623.html (up and down depending on DNS)
posted on December 1st, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Craig
Is there a status page for everydns?
posted on December 1st, 2006 at 4:37 pm
John Roberts
The status page for EveryDNS is here
http://www.everydns.net/news.php
It is erratically available, as you might imagine, and has not yet been updated, as EveryDNS is focused on fighting the attack, rather than posting updates, although David shares his apologies to all EveryDNS customers.
posted on December 1st, 2006 at 4:42 pm
JDPower
Is it possible for the OpenDNS servers to be hit with this kind of attack and would it result in a loss of connectivity for us users?
(I know this isn’t the case here but the blog entry made me curious)
posted on December 1st, 2006 at 5:29 pm
micksam7
Also being discussed at
http://groups.google.com/group/n3td3v/browse_thread/thread/1a61173616c285f6/a0b93332f814aabe?lnk=st&q=everydns&rnum=1
And irc channel irc.oftc.net #everydns
posted on December 1st, 2006 at 6:09 pm
Websonic
As everydns hasn’t been accessible for 6 hours thus far, it would be very helpful if better updates were provided here. If there’s no estimate for getting this under control, we need to know as we need to start moving DNS for a large number of our company’s accounts.
posted on December 1st, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Scott Gamble
I can sympathize here - though I’m DYING for a real update so I can effectively formulate a strategy here, I can appreciate needing to make a decision between fighting the problem or spending your time talking to everyone about it.
posted on December 1st, 2006 at 10:30 pm
EveryDNS Under DDoS Attack | HostingFu
[…] EveryDNS, which I reviewed here, are currently under DDoS attack, which causes domain resolution either very slow, or not working at all. I only noticed it when the site uptime monitor I used started showing false positives, i.e. reporting sites down when the servers are actually up. Seems to be going on for more than 12 hours now. […]
posted on December 2nd, 2006 at 3:16 am
Andrew
Today is Dec 2 and for the whole day I can’t reach my domains parked in everydns.net. I don’t know why in the blog they say that everything is fine. Sometimes I can reach my domain part without www prefix, but the whole www.mydomain.com name doesn’t resolve. Any updates would be greatly appreciated!
Andrew
posted on December 2nd, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Shades
i believe you’ve made a grammatical error in this blog post.
and it urks me because I am an IT.
Denial of Service == DoS
Disk Operating System == DOS
Even the slightest change in capitilization can change the meaning of any acronym.
posted on December 2nd, 2006 at 7:17 pm
Teckie Life at Southwest MSU…» Blog Archive » EveryDNS under DDoS Attack: Causes Outage at TerryPearson.com
[…] My DNS server is hosted through EveryDNS.net. On Friday a massive Denial Of Service attack was launched against their servers. A sister site of EveryDNS, OpenDNS.com also went down. On their blog, OpenDNS explained the situation and said it was resolving the DoS attack. They also said that the DoS attack is still happening, but they have found ways to better cope with the situation. Hopefully, the attack subsides and all the websites that rely on their services will continue to function. […]
posted on December 2nd, 2006 at 9:56 pm
David Ulevitch
Andrew,
Shoot me an email: davidu [at ] everydns.net if you’re still seeing issues…
posted on December 3rd, 2006 at 3:05 pm