Amazon Says Hardware, Not Hackers, Caused Outage

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Amazon Says Hardware, Not Hackers, Caused Outage

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday December 13, 2010 @01:52AM from the finger-pointing dept.

ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Amazon has denied reports that its European sites were brought down by a DoS attack by a hacker group sympathetic to Wikileaks cause. The retailer was a planned target for the attackers, called Anonymous. But Amazon said it was a hardware failure in its European data centre network that caused the half hour outage in Europe."

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Re:I don't know by Haedrian · 2010-12-13 01:57 · Score: 3, Informative

I'm sure I do. DDOSing Amazon would require a hell of a lot of clients.

And Anonymous themselves said they weren't going to attack Amazon.
possible cause of failure by bl8n8r · 2010-12-13 02:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

Load from the DDoS traffic fried the switch. So you see, it's a hardware failure.

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1. Re:possible cause of failure by Opportunist · 2010-12-13 05:29 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You don't watch many action movies, do you? From them I learned that you can even make computers explode by things like entering the wrong password or just hitting the wrong key. And they also throw you halfway across the room when they blow up in sparkles.
  
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I know one thing... by digitaldc · 2010-12-13 02:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

...you can't believe anything you read about outages any more.

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He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Managing Perceptions by theshowmecanuck · 2010-12-13 02:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

Whether true or not, Amazon pretty much has to say it was something other than a DDoS that impacted their site(s). It would be bad for business to say that an attack from a bunch of hackers can impact them negatively in any serious way. They have to maintain this "strong" outward face to their clients to maintain their level of trust. Given that Amazon did suffer some sort of outage or reduced service during the time period, I'm not sure of anything other than a trusted third party investigation to understand what level of effect the DDoS 'attack' had (if any) on Amazon. I'm not saying there isn't a way, I just don't know of one. Maybe someone can suggest one.

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1. Re:Managing Perceptions by Rysc · 2010-12-13 02:08 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It would also be bad for business to say "We weren't attacked, we just suck at doing our jobs." This is precisely what hardware-related outages mean for an outfit like Amazon. Why would you trust your business to Amazon hosted services when they are incompetent?
  
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Re:I don't know by Errol+backfiring · 2010-12-13 02:10 · Score: 4, Funny

In fact, a whole cloud of them.

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Beginning of the End of DDoS? by Notquitecajun · 2010-12-13 02:10 · Score: 3, Interesting

I wonder if the recent WL issues signal the end of DDoS for at least large companies - Visa, Mastercard, Amazon, etc. I can foresee them putting enough money into their servers and infrastructure that, at some point, they really couldn't be overwhelmed. Is this going to wind up being a hardware or software issue in the future in preventing DDoS attacks?
1. Re:Beginning of the End of DDoS? by nicholas22 · 2010-12-13 02:19 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  It all depends on the actual DDoS load. There's no such thing as infinite bandwidth, you see. Amazon was down for 30 minutes in 4 countries on Sunday. And this by some quasi-organized group of script kiddies. So no, I don't see that being the case yet at all...
Re:Yes but... by Sonny+Yatsen · 2010-12-13 02:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

You post on slashdot and you pay attention to the news. I seriously doubt you fit into the category of "average customer".
I believe you'd find that the "average customer" doesn't share the "hate" that you suddenly gained, but are rather quite apathetic about the whole thing so long as they can get a cheap Playstation 3.

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wait by marcello_dl · 2010-12-13 02:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

A hardware failure bringing down the site of a corporation who also is a cloud provider it's pretty bad PR, there should be no single point of failure in a proper cloudy system :)

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Re:Yes but... by Lumpy · 2010-12-13 03:02 · Score: 5, Informative

I agree, back in 1776 a bunch of evil weasels took over the colonies and look at what happened. a lot of innocent British soldiers sent over to protect the citizens died!
One man's TERRORIST is another mans Freedom Fighter.

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Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Re:Yes but... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-12-13 04:51 · Score: 3, Interesting

I agree, back in 1776 a bunch of evil weasels took over the colonies and look at what happened. a lot of innocent British soldiers sent over to protect the citizens died!
On their first terrorist attack, they cowardly disguised themselves to put the blame on innocent Native Americans. If they had succeeded, they could have caused an Indian massacre by the British.