Several Sites Including Twitter, GitHub, Spotify, PayPal, NYTimes Suffering Outage -- Dyn DNS Under DDoS Attack [Update] (techcrunch.com)

Several popular websites and services are down right now for many users. The affected sites include Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify, and PayPal among others. The cause appears to be a sweeping outage of DNS provider Dyn -- which in turn is under DDoS attack, according to an official blog post. From a TechCrunch report:Other sites experiencing issues include Box, Boston Globe, New York Times, Github, Airbnb, Reddit, Freshbooks, Heroku and Vox Media properties. Users accessing these sites might have more or less success depending on where they're located, as some European and Asian users seem not to be encountering these issues. Last month, Bruce Schneier warned that someone was learning how to take down the internet. Update: 10/21 14:41 GMT by M : Dyn says that it has resolved the issue and sites should function normally. Update: 10/21 17:04 GMT by M : Department of Homeland Security says it is aware of the first DDoS attack on Dyn today and "investigating all potential causes." Dyn says it is still under DDoS attack. News outlet The Next Web says it is also facing issues. Any website that uses Dyn's service -- directly or indirectly -- is facing the issue. Motherboard has more details. Update: 10/21 17:57 GMT by M : It seems even PlayStation Network is also hit. EA Sports Games said it is aware of the issues in live-play. Dyn says it is facing a second round of DDoS attacks.

Update: 10/21 18:45 GMT by M : U.S. government probing whether east coast internet attack was a 'criminal act' - official.

Editor's note: the story is being updated as we learn more. The front page was updated to move this story up. Are you also facing issues? Share your experience in the comments section below.

Comments

Twitter Down

[Feneric]

It's hard to tweet that Twitter is down when Twitter is down.

Re:Twitter Down

[Big Hairy Ian]

But if Google+ went down would anybody notice :D

Re:Twitter Down

[rickb928]

"But if Google+ went down would anybody notice :D"

Some, who value more enlightened discussions, or resent the FB data grabs, and the FB way of ignoring your preference to see what has happened in your sphere most recently and instead try to force feed you what THEY think is most relevant.

Relevance being defined by THEM, to THEIR purposes.

G+ isn't big. That's not even the best thing about it. You, however, I doubt have even actually used it beyond a single visit and thinking 'wow, there's no one here'. You were not missed.

Re:Great!

[ScentCone]

Hopefully they never come back up! It would be great to live in a world with the above gone.

Right! Because we sure wouldn't want small businesses to be able to do business using a payment mechanism they choose to use, or people to conveniently communicate from their phones using a service they choose to use, or listen to music from a source they choose to use. Definitely, all such things should be destroyed. What the hell is wrong with you?

Re:Dns

[omnichad]

The thing about DNS is that to get the best speed, you want the nodes distributed as far and wide as possible. And you don't want it on the same servers as your main service. So it's either a different department or a different company - guess which one is cheaper.

Re: Great!

[ScentCone]

You really need to be less of an absolutist

See, my perspective is that you absolutely should have the choice to use PayPal or Square or what have you, if you choose to. You ... absolutely think they should be shut down? In what way am I over-reacting to someone who thinks that Twitter should go away? Why not simply offer a better choice, or at least ignore the thing they don't like? The world view that calls for the destruction of businesses that whiners resent or wish were different is a fundamental problem with our current culture. So yes, it's worth reacting, and pointing out the baseline trollishness of such perspectives. Because the little baby tyrants that live inside people who think like that are poisonous to everyone. "I don't like that thing! I hope it dies!"

No, I'm not confused. But I see that you're trying very hard to avoid the big picture.

DynECT is a dinosaur

[Anonymous Coward]

Working at a medium traffic startup, DynECT always insisted that their service was worth a lot[1] more money than AWS's Route 53 or Google's Cloud DNS because unlike AWS or Google they had never had a service outage and boasted 100% uptime since their company was founded.

Looks like we made the right choice going with Route 53 instead of these guys.

1. Seriously, they wanted 5,000 USD/mo when AWS charges 8 USD/mo for the same service.

Starbucks is down too

[known_coward_69]

Tried to reload my card via the app and couldn't. had to pay for my drink with a credit card. The shame

Re:Starbucks is down too

[sinij]

Tried to reload my card via the app and couldn't. had to pay for my drink with a credit card. The shame

Did you drop your monocle into chardonnay^H^H^H^H Google Glass into your frappe because of that?

Re:Great!

[ScentCone]

Paying money every month for a couple of sine waves coming out of a cheap tinny Chinese speaker.
Paying money to paypal for the privilege of paying. Paypal fees are f**ing ridiculous

Here's an idea: don't use those services.

Obviously you are personally running a much better music streaming service that you'd like to offer to Spotify's millions of customers. Can you provide a link to something that they will find persuasive? I'm sure your system is easier to use, less expensive, widely available, performs well, pays the artists who create the material they license to you, and in all other ways is superior to Spotify. Looking forward to your offering! Right? Yes?

And, obviously you have never been involved in any sort of commerce there in your mom's basement. Or, are you offering the infrastructure, security, staff, and other resources that will allow individuals and businesses the means by which to handle financial transactions on the fly, a million times a day, but at no cost to any party involved? Fantastic! Please provide a link to that other service of yours, too. That would be awesome. Right? Yes? No? I see.

Re:Great!

[stealth_finger]

Paying money to paypal for the privilege of paying. Paypal fees are f**ing ridiculous

Ha, you should check out the bank fees.

Re:Great!

[ScentCone]

Torrent, cryptocurrency. Spotify uses DRM. DRM is evil. I am surprised to see someone on Slashdot supporting these muppets.

I'm supporting your CHOICE to use whatever services you like, and to move to something else if you prefer. Wishing for the destruction of such services by a malicious third party is BS. If you want them to go away because you philosophically disagree with, say, musicians choosing to whom they license their works ... then offer a service that musicians like better. Some don't license their works to Spotify. That's different than cheering when some script kiddies act to destroy access to it.

Re:The eternal balance question...

[ZenShadow]

The dynamics of this issue have changed considerably.

Five years or so ago, going offline was a Big Deal. Nowadays, people (both users and CxO's) don't seem to care as much; outages are transient, and accepted as a part of the cost of doing business. It's kinda sad for those of us who build high availability systems, but at the same time it's probably a lot more realistic for the budgets of most businesses.

Part of it, IMO, is that the Internet has been around long enough now (in a commercial sense) that the users are finally more prone to saying "my Internet is down" than "my Twitter is down".

Perception is everything.

Re:Small dick russians

[interkin3tic]

On the topic of Russians, I'm going to assume that this is Putin trying to help his employee Trump win. If Trump can't tweet, he can't keep reminding voters of all the reasons they want to vote against him. And the only way to keep Trump from tweeting is to take out Twitter.

It's mainly affecting the east coast, sure, but also Ohio which Trump needs to win.

Seems like a much more straightforward than using trolling to help him win.

Re:Dns

[guruevi]

Yes, but the problem here is all these services are using a singular DNS service which is under attack.

A good decade and a half ago, when I was part of a hosting company, we had the DNS for our customers across 3 or 4 different providers. That way, if for whatever reason one provider went out of business, the domains would continue to operate.

The problem is this:
Github.com:
      Name Server: NS1.P16.DYNECT.NET
      Name Server: NS2.P16.DYNECT.NET
      Name Server: NS3.P16.DYNECT.NET
      Name Server: NS4.P16.DYNECT.NET

Twitter.com
      Name Server: NS1.P34.DYNECT.NET
      Name Server: NS2.P34.DYNECT.NET
      Name Server: NS3.P34.DYNECT.NET
      Name Server: NS4.P34.DYNECT.NET

Box.net
Name Server: ns3.p05.dynect.net
Name Server: ns1.p05.dynect.net
Name Server: ns2.p05.dynect.net
Name Server: ns4.p05.dynect.net

If for whatever reason DynDNS pulls the plug (which they have a history of for reasons of profit and incompetence), all these sites are down. It doesn't matter whether or not you're using Unicast or Anycast, if your provider 'dies' (or it's host providers like Amazon which also has a history of major outages) then your domain dies. And before you get all your glue records fixed, you're out at least 48-72 hours.