the sephone blog

If you watch the Today Show, Glenn Beck, Anderson Cooper or other TV news shows, you may have heard about Twitter and Facebook going down last week.

And more recently, a Business Week Article of the same.

DDOS attacks have not been confined to just Twitter and Facebook but have been responsible for many very high profile sites falling victim to this type of activity. A Fact:  25% of all web servers online are currently vulnerable to these types of attacks and that number is growing every day.

How can that happen?
What happens is a “flurry” of messages that go to a web server that are irrelevant lines of code. This confuses the server. When we say “flurry” we mean, tens of thousands in a matter of seconds or minutes that continue until the web server raises a white flag and surrenders.

A “DDOS” can also be a result of a malicious attack on software or operating system vulnerability on a given server.   Kind of like leaving your back door open and someone you don’t know comes walking into your kitchen.

What does this mean to you?
If you are a website owner it means your site is very slow to serve or perhaps it doesnt serve at all. So online you are hanging out the CLOSED sign or in geek speak you get “404 page not found” message on your screen.

As a web application and service provider, we need to say we have been victims of these attacks ourselves and it is very challenging.  In fact,  we had one recently. During this attack, one of our servers fell prey to the maliciousness effects of the hacker.  This caused the server and all sites on it to stop operations. To fix it, Sephone technicians worked at all hours going to the backup and then rebuilt a new server so the sites could be re-hosted and work properly. But  every situation is different and the troubleshooting is vital to learn the root cause and fix the actual PROBLEMS and not just the symptoms of the problem.

Hackers are very busy writing scripts and setting them loose on the web-just for the fun of it. It doesn’t seem to cause any long term damage to the website or application, but it does create a huge short term inconvenience to your business and to ours.

In our goal is to be a consistent and conscientious web service company. We are always looking to see how to provide the best service, how to stay on top of things to combat the what seems to be countless people from IP addresses located in far off countries like Russia, Phillipines, China, etc. with little or no regulation or laws.

There also are many blogs and stories on line about this and other types of malicious hacking activities. Most all of them more technically written than this post. Here is an example. But it has always been Sephone’s policy to try and explain things in a meaningful way as opposed to using words that can be confusing or words only “geeks like us” understand, because we want YOU to understand.

We thank you for being our clients and trusting us with your online presence. When you thought the “WWW” meant “World Wide Web” it really can mean “Wild, Wild, West” at times and we will continue to fight our fight, providing you the best service at a fair price while remaining vigilant in the cause. We will recommend new technology – when it makes sense and always keep our eyes open for the best ways to do things within the always changing internet environment.

If you have any questions, remember we are right here on the other end of the phone!