Durante os doze dias entre 25 de dezembro e 5 de janeiro, a Linode viu mais de uma centena de ataques de negação de serviço contra cada grande parte de nossa infra-estrutura, alguns perturbando gravemente o serviço para centenas de milhares de clientes da Linode. Gostaria de dar seguimento à minha atualização anterior fornecendo mais informações sobre como fomos atacados e o que estamos fazendo para impedir que isso aconteça novamente.
Essencialmente, o atacante subiu em nossa pilha aproximadamente nesta ordem:
- Ataques de camada 7 ("400 Bad Request") a nossos sites voltados para o público
- Ataques volumétricos a nossos websites, nameservers confiáveis e outros serviços públicos
- Ataques volumétricos à infra-estrutura da rede Linode
- Ataques volumétricos à infra-estrutura de rede de nosso fornecedor de colocation
A maioria dos ataques foram simples ataques volumétricos. Um ataque volumétrico é o tipo mais comum de ataque distribuído de negação de serviço (DDoS) no qual um canhão de tráfego de lixo é direcionado para um endereço IP, limpando a vítima pretendida da Internet. É o equivalente virtual a causar intencionalmente um engarrafamento de tráfego usando uma frota de carros alugados, e a omnipresença destes tipos de ataques tem causado centenas de bilhões de dólares em prejuízos econômicos globalmente.
Tipicamente, a Linode vê várias dúzias de ataques volumétricos dirigidos a nossos clientes a cada dia. Entretanto, estes ataques quase nunca afetam a rede mais ampla da Linode por causa de uma ferramenta que usamos para nos proteger, chamada de blackholing acionada remotamente. Quando um endereço IP é "blackholed", a Internet concorda coletivamente em abandonar todo o tráfego destinado a esse endereço IP, impedindo que tanto o tráfego bom como o ruim cheguem a ele. Para redes de conteúdo como Linode, que têm centenas de milhares de IPs, o blackholing é uma arma bruta mas crucial em nosso arsenal, dando-nos a capacidade de "cortar um dedo para salvar a mão" - ou seja, sacrificar o cliente que está sendo atacado a fim de manter os outros online.
O blackholing deixa de ser um atenuador eficaz em uma circunstância óbvia, mas importante: quando o IP que está sendo visado, por exemplo, uma parte essencial da infraestrutura, não pode ficar off-line sem derrubar outros com ele. Os exemplos que geralmente vêm à mente são "servidores de servidores", como endpoints de API ou servidores DNS, que constituem a base de outra infraestrutura. Embora muitos dos ataques tenham sido contra nossos "servidores de servidores", os mais difíceis de mitigar acabaram sendo os ataques direcionados diretamente à nossa infraestrutura de rede e à dos nossos provedores de colocation.
Endereços secundários
Os ataques contra nossa infra-estrutura de rede foram relativamente simples, mas mitigá-los não foi fácil. Como um artefato da história, segmentamos os clientes em sub-redes individuais /24, o que significa que nossos roteadores devem ter um endereço IP "secundário" dentro de cada uma dessas sub-redes para que os clientes possam usar como seus gateways de rede.
Com o passar do tempo, nossos roteadores acumularam centenas desses endereços secundários, cada um deles um alvo potencial de ataque. É claro que esta não foi a primeira vez que nossos roteadores foram atacados diretamente. Tipicamente, medidas especiais são tomadas para enviar anúncios de blackhole para nossos upstreams sem blackhole em nosso núcleo, impedindo o ataque e permitindo que o tráfego de clientes passe como de costume. Entretanto, não estávamos preparados para o cenário em que alguém atacou rápida e imprevisivelmente muitas dezenas de IPs secundários diferentes em nossos roteadores. Isto se deu por algumas razões. Primeiro, a atenuação dos ataques aos equipamentos de rede exigiu uma intervenção manual dos engenheiros de rede que era lenta e propensa a erros. Segundo, nossos provedores upstream só podiam aceitar um número limitado de anúncios de buracos negros a fim de limitar o potencial de danos em caso de erro.
Depois de vários dias de jogos de gato e rato com o atacante, pudemos trabalhar com nossos fornecedores de colocação para fazer um buraco negro em todos os nossos endereços secundários ou, em vez disso, deixar o tráfego nas bordas das redes de seus fornecedores de trânsito onde o buraco negro não era possível.
Cross-Connects
Os ataques contra nossos fornecedores de colocação foram igualmente simples, mas ainda mais difíceis de mitigar. Uma vez que nossos roteadores não puderam mais ser atacados diretamente, nossos parceiros de colocação e seus fornecedores de trânsito se tornaram o próximo alvo lógico - especificamente, suas conexões cruzadas. Uma conexão cruzada pode geralmente ser considerada como a ligação física entre quaisquer dois roteadores na Internet. Cada lado deste link físico precisa de um endereço IP para que os dois roteadores possam se comunicar um com o outro, e foram esses endereços IP que foram alvos.
Como foi o caso de nossa própria infra-estrutura, este método de ataque não era novidade em si mesmo. O que tornou este método tão eficaz foi a rapidez e a imprevisibilidade dos ataques. Em muitos de nossos centros de dados, dezenas de IPs diferentes dentro das redes a montante foram atacados, exigindo um nível de foco e coordenação entre nossos parceiros de colocação e seus fornecedores de trânsito que era difícil de manter. Nossa interrupção mais longa de longe - mais de 30 horas em Atlanta - pode ser diretamente atribuída a frequentes quebras na comunicação entre o pessoal da Linode e pessoas que às vezes estavam a quatro graus de distância de nós. Conseguimos finalmente fechar completamente este vetor de ataque depois que alguns provedores de trânsito teimosos finalmente reconheceram que sua infra-estrutura estava sendo atacada e conseguiram colocar medidas para parar os ataques.
Lições aprendidas
A nível pessoal, temos vergonha de que algo assim possa ter acontecido, e aprendemos algumas lições difíceis com a experiência.
Lição um: não dependa de intermediários Em retrospectiva, acreditamos que as interrupções mais longas poderiam ter sido evitadas se não tivéssemos confiado em nossos parceiros de colocação para o trânsito de PI. Há duas razões específicas para isso: Primeiro, em vários casos, fomos levados a acreditar que nossos fornecedores de colocação simplesmente tinham mais capacidade de trânsito de PI do que realmente tinham. Várias vezes, a quantidade de tráfego de ataque direcionado para Linode era tão grande que nossos fornecedores de colocação não tiveram outra escolha a não ser despoletar temporariamente com a rede Linode até que os ataques terminassem. Em segundo lugar, mitigar com sucesso alguns dos ataques mais matizados exigiu o envolvimento direto de engenheiros seniores de rede de diferentes provedores Tier 1. Às 4 da manhã em um fim de semana de férias, nossos parceiros de colocação se tornaram uma barreira extra e desnecessária entre nós e as pessoas que poderiam resolver nossos problemas.
Lição dois: absorver ataques maiores A estratégia de gerenciamento de capacidade da Linode para o trânsito IP tem sido simples: quando nosso pico de utilização diária começa a se aproximar de 50% de nossa capacidade total, então é hora de obter mais links. Esta estratégia é padrão para redes de operadoras, mas agora entendemos que ela é inadequada para redes de conteúdo como a nossa. Para colocar alguns números reais nisto, nossas redes menores de datacenter têm uma capacidade total de trânsito IP de 40Gbps. Isto pode parecer muita capacidade para muitos de vocês, mas no contexto de um DDoS de 80Gbps que não pode ser blackholed, ter apenas 20Gbps de headroom nos deixa com perda de pacotes paralisantes durante todo o ataque.
Lição três: deixar os clientes saberem o que está acontecendo É importante reconhecer quando falhamos, e nossa falta de comunicação detalhada durante os primeiros dias do ataque foi um grande fracasso. Fornecer atualizações técnicas detalhadas durante um momento de crise só pode ser feito por aqueles com conhecimento detalhado do estado atual da situação. Normalmente, essas pessoas também são as que estão combatendo o fogo. Depois que as coisas se acalmaram e revisamos nossas comunicações públicas, chegamos à conclusão de que nosso medo de redigir algo mal e causar pânico indevido nos levou a falar de forma mais ambígua do que deveríamos ter em nossas atualizações de status. Isto foi errado, e, indo adiante, uma pessoa técnica designada será responsável por se comunicar em detalhes durante grandes eventos como este. Além disso, nossa página de status agora permite que os clientes sejam alertados sobre questões de serviço por e-mail e mensagens de texto SMS através do link "Subscribe to Updates".
Nosso Futuro é mais Brilhante que nosso Passado
Com estas lições em mente, gostaríamos que você soubesse como as estamos colocando em prática. Primeiro, a parte fácil: mitigamos a ameaça de ataques contra nossos servidores voltados para o público, implementando a mitigação do DDoS. Nossos nameservers estão agora protegidos pelo Cloudflare, e nossos websites estão agora protegidos por poderosos aparelhos de purificação de tráfego comercial. Além disso, nos certificamos de que as técnicas de mitigação de emergência postas em prática durante estes ataques de férias tenham sido tornadas permanentes.
Por si só, estas medidas nos colocam em um lugar onde estamos confiantes de que os tipos de ataques que aconteceram durante as férias não podem acontecer novamente. Ainda assim, temos que fazer mais. Portanto, hoje estou entusiasmado em anunciar que a Linode fará uma revisão de toda a nossa estratégia de conectividade com o datacenter, fazendo a revisão de 200 gigabits de trânsito e de capacidade de peering dos principais pontos regionais de presença em cada uma de nossas localidades.
Aqui está uma visão geral das próximas melhorias de infra-estrutura em nosso centro de dados Newark, que será o primeiro a receber essas melhorias de capacidade.
A linha de frente desta arquitetura são as redes de transporte ótico que já começamos a construir. Estas redes fornecerão caminhos totalmente diversificados para alguns dos mais importantes PoPs da região, dando à Linode acesso a centenas de diferentes opções de transporte e a milhares de parceiros diretos de peering. Em comparação com nossa arquitetura existente, os benefícios desta atualização são óbvios. Estaremos assumindo o controle de toda a nossa infra-estrutura, até o limite da Internet. Isto significa que, ao invés de depender de intermediários para o trânsito IP, estaremos em parceria direta com as operadoras das quais dependemos para o serviço.
Além disso, Linode quintuplicará a quantidade de largura de banda disponível atualmente, permitindo-nos absorver ataques DDoS extremamente grandes até que sejam devidamente mitigados. À medida que o tamanho dos ataques crescer no futuro, esta arquitetura será rapidamente dimensionada para atender suas demandas sem nenhum novo e importante investimento de capital.
Palavras finais
Por fim, as sinceras desculpas estão em ordem. Como empresa que hospeda infra-estrutura crítica para nossos clientes, temos a responsabilidade de manter essa infra-estrutura on-line. Esperamos que a transparência e o pensamento de vanguarda neste posto possam recuperar parte dessa confiança. Gostaríamos também de agradecer por suas amáveis palavras de compreensão e apoio. Muitos de nós tivemos nossas férias arruinadas por estes ataques implacáveis, e é uma coisa difícil de tentar explicar aos nossos entes queridos. O apoio da comunidade tem realmente ajudado. Encorajamos você a postar suas perguntas ou comentários abaixo.
Comentários (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.