At 4:22PM today (PST) our server went down due to high load. After some investigation our server technicians let me know that we were experiencing a “… a coordinated, distributed attack against multiple sites on the server…”
Of course that sent me into dizzying interrogation mode to find out – who was the intended victim of this attack; which sites were attacked; and the big one: why?
Our techs let me know:
No one account was causing these issues, rather it was a coordinated, distributed attack against multiple sites on the server.
Who was the target?
Random sites on the server’s primary shared IP were targeted. These attacks do not often target random sites such as this attack did…
That means that random sites on our server were attacked.
How to Stop the Attack:
We have placed a hardware firewall in front of the server, and malicious traffic is being mitigated.
It is stopped but the server will likely remain under attack for the next few hours. The techs at HostGator are actively monitoring the sites.
Who did this?
As the attack’s true source is hidden, there is little we can do to discover the cause of the attack.
Unfortunately it is unlikely we will ever know.
Conclusions
Unfortunately being a webmaster and owning a website comes with a certain amount of risk. The ‘bad guys’ are out there seeking vulnerabilities and just generally wreaking havoc (similarly to our offline lives). We keep up with all the best practices, security enhancements and monitoring that is available to us. But just once in a while someone becomes the victim. This was one of those times. Because of excellent monitoring, backups, and 24 hour technicians, our downtime was minimal and any real damage was prevented!
This should be an excellent reminder to keep your sites backed up and up to date. Out of date software is the number one cause of vulnerabilities online! So please – keep your WordPress, plugins and themes up to date!
Questions? Leave a comment or drop me a line at cathy at desperatelyseekingwp dot com.
