NameDrive's first malicious attack

[NameDriver]

NameDrive suffers malicious attack

Well there you go.

We've officially been in business for 10 days and somebody hits us with a DDOS attack. Astounding when you think we should be as noticeable on the radar as your local greengrocer's online store.

It was clearly not a random attack and the very fact that a similar thing hit a slightly larger company than us recently suggests that someone is not a big fan of new, successful, popular parking programs...

On a serious note, we are fully aware that other parking companies have impressed early doors and then had huge server problems as they were victims of their own success and couldn't supply to meet demand. We have already taken steps to ensure this doesn't happen and currently have far more bandwidth than we need. However, as has been shown in recent days, even the mightiest cannot deal with a sustained, malicious attack.

You will, naturally, be compensated for any revenue lost and I hope this hasn't tarnished your image of us as this sadly something beyond our control. This episode has only served to show that we are doing something right enough to get noticed and that we are now stronger than before to deal with attacks such as these.
If any of you, such as Firestar, just started testing with us at pretty much the moment the servers went down and are concerned about any lost revenue, email me directly at [email protected] and we'll sort it out.

Thank you for your continued support. This can only make us stronger. We are back online again but the system is still a little slow. It should be up to full capacity again by mid-afternoon on Tuesday. Your compensation will not only take the downtime into account, but also the lag experienced over the early hours of today.

Let me know by email if there's anything I can do for anyone.

Ed

 

[retired member 1]

Yes, it's a real shame...I had simlar problems during the early days at parkingsite.

I'm just waiting until i've been with them a month, then i'll sum up if it was really worth me moving all my domains from Sedo.

I was considering moving back to Sedo after the month is up but i've also been hearing good things about Namedrive so I think i'll give you guys a go in a few weeks

 

[NameDriver]

Just to give everyone a brief update:

There is still a not insignificant amount of evil traffic coming in on our servers which isn't helping to reduce the lag when loading our parked sites or our homepage. Our CTO and his team have done away with non-essential things such as sleep and food and are working harder than I've ever imagined working to get everything back up again.
This was a blatant attack designed to knock us out of the water, not temporarily like the big fish, but permenantly.
We're going to take measures to ensure this doesn't happen again, naturally.

I'll give you the all-clear when it's green light again and want to stress that all of this will be compensated for.

Thanks for your patience.

Ed

 

[retired_member16]

Forget that. :grin:

 

[NameDriver]

Update #2

More important than the last update. We have closed down everything for a short time so that we can get everything back on its feet again without any traffic hitting our servers at all. This downtime will be kept to an absolute minimum of course.
We have the advantage of youth. Our brand spanking new system shouldn't have too much in it that needs to be straightened out, but we need to make sure everything is running smoothly, so thanks for your patience while we carry this out. Once it's done, the pages should be snapping onto the screen as bright and breezy as ever

Thank you, people.

 

[Paullas]

.

as long as you keep us informed ed i think people wont mind. dont do a sedo and not let anyone know what is going on

 

[NameDriver]

I am doing a NameDrive and letting you all know what's going on.

It's been a couple of hours since everything was ballsed up. We may have the advantage of youth on our side, but we have also found that this was not just any DDOS attack.
It is becoming clear that this was a contract hit taken out on us designed to do us out of our livelihood and what we have spent so long to build up. We are contacting those people who need to be contacted about the necessary route to take legally-wise once this whole mess has been cleaned up.
I hate to say it, but we will be working on this for a while yet until it is up and running again at full capacity. I HATE to say it, but you are probably better off directing your names away from us for the short-term as we will probably be slow for a short while to come.
It is so fantastic that so many of you tried us out. This is a real kick in the teeth, but we will be back, fitter, stronger in a matter of hours, not days.

I could really be able to give the all clear in 30 minutes or 12 hours, it's hard to say. Our techs have been up for around 30 hours working on this. I just don't want to make the mistake others have made by saying 'stick in there, everything will be OK in 10 minutes... and then keep you holding on for 10 days...)

It is hard for me to turn people away after trying so hard to get you here in the first place!

I can only thank you and hope you come back to us when we will be mightier and higher-paying than ever (with our new optimization on board as well )
If you do stay with us and have been with us for some time so we an gauge your average daily earnings, we will naturally compensate you if you stay with us through this.

Sorry people.

We'll see you in the corridors of NameDrive again soon

Ed

 

[retired_member16]

Ed - does this have anything to do with your MCI connection in Canada?

 

[NameDriver]

NameDrive is alive again!

We are up again. 24 hours knocked out and the attacks are STILL coming in! Anyways, we have found a way to neutralize them and are getting back to full almighty power.

Thanks everyone who said that you'll stick by us. You are all fabulous. Oh no, I'm not allowed to use that word. You're all fantastic. We will deliver on all our promises and thank you again everyone.

We are back up again! It will take a while to sort out all the mess (compensation etc.), but once the dust settles, you'll remember why you're here..

Thank you everyone.

Ed

 

[retired_member9]

Sorry to hear about Namedrive's problems..
Just wonder who might want to distort new domain parking service - rivals?
Or was it sort of a common blackmail attack?

 

[charlie]

ed,
i think as with anything a business invests in what you look for is support to say

I HATE to say it, but you are probably better off directing your names away from us for the short-term as we will probably be slow for a short while to come.

is the wrong message if you even have a modest 500 domains like me to change all the name servers is a nightmare job. I appreciate your honesty, the information and that DOS attacks affect all similar services but i think you should give a more positive message confident that your services will be up and running soon - to change and then change back would be a good deal of time.

 

[NameDriver]

Thanks Charlie,

I can well appreciate that. As I said, it's something we thought long and hard about doing. The fact was that the enormity of the attack (which went on for well over 24 hours) became clearer to us as the day went on. As it turned out, it was only a couple of hours between posting that message and posting the All Clear. However, by early evening, the attacks were still ongoing and I didn't want to keep people hanging by a thread.
Having seen how bigger, more established parking companies than ourselves had needed well over 24 hours to sort it out, I decided to point out exactly the situation: if you're happy to stick it out, we'll compensate you, but we can't give you a definite time when everything will be back up.

Anyway, I don't want to spend too long justifying myself as we are now up and running at full capacity. It seems that, across the board, the dust needs to settle on Tuesday 13th (unlucky in Spain...), but we are up and running as fast as ever.

Thanks so much for the support people, thanks for your feedback Charlie. I hope you stuck by us, but I'd be happy to put in the man hours to move them all back for you if you did make the move
Feel free to email me if you have any personal issues.

Ed