Linode’s Atlanta datacenter, which hosts thousands of websites, including NewsForShoppers.com, underwent a massive DDoS attack over Labor Day weekend.
Affected websites began being knocked offline starting about 5pm (EST) Saturday.
By 5:15pm, Linode had posted on their network status blog that the problem had been identified as a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on their Atlanta datacenter.
A DDos attack works by flooding a website or network with an overwhelming amount of traffic. Like a highway packed with too many cars and trucks, a traffic jam ensues.
Attackers use botnets to send the flood of traffic. A botnet is a large number home and business computers the attackers have gained remote access to by infecting them with viruses. That’s the ‘distributed’ part of the attack. The traffic comes from so many locations it’s extremely difficult to block.
Linode was able to mitigate the attacks and many of the affected sites were back online by midnight on Saturday.
But the attacks resumed Sunday morning. At 9:54am, Linode reported the attacks were “significantly impacting connectivity.”
We’ve seen evidence of that here at CP, with our site being on and offline sporadically all morning.
Linode suffered a major DDoS attack on their infrastructure last year during the Christmas holidays. The attack began on December 25 and lasted for 12 days. That attack affected not only the Atlanta datacenter, but also their datacenters in Dallas, Newark, NJ, Fremont, CA, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and Singapore.
We’ve contacted Linode for additional information. By publication time, they had not yet responded. When they do we will update this article.
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~ edited to reflect current events
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