Ask HN: What is it with the recent DDoS attacks on Linode?

[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

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.

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?"

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.