Executive Summary of Issue

If you host with Managed Solutions you may have had some slow performance or time outs while checking Email. If your website is hosted through us it is possible that it took longer to resolve or may have in some cases timed out. This issue was only in effect 8/7/2010 from 8:00UTC-14:00UTC 3AM-9AM Eastern Time.

8:42AM 1/11/2010
We have confirmed through research, discussions with our hosting partner and testing that the DNS issues are much more widespread than we had anticipated. There is an event of some significance occurring this morning effecting a substantial number of domain names. Enom and other providers are being affected. We will update this post as soon as we have more information.

9:01AM on Monday 1/11/2010
A hashtag is now being used to track this issue on Twitter #dnsmonday please be advised this issue is affecting enom.com, register.com and any subsidiary/resale accounts in their network.

9:27AM on Monday 1/11/2010
Enom Twitter status states they are working through a DoS attack. Here is a screen capture:

9:34AM Monday 1/11/2010 Podcast added

10:27AM Monday 1/11/2010
According to a number of people posting on Twitter with the #dnsmonday hashtag this issue is still affecting numerous domains. Enom has stated that they are working through the DDoS attack. As many large companies have learned a small number of hosts with the right tools can bring down very large service providers. It remains to be seen who the attackers are in this case, but that will be the next chapter of this story. I did note that namebargain.com (a subsidiary of register.com) was completely offline earlier this morning but seems to be back up now. Follow  #dnsmonday on Twitter or check back here for more information. We will continue to update this article as more information becomes available.

11:29AM Monday 1/11/2010
Enom is now reporting that services are 100% restored. More details are likely to emerge throughout the day.

3:30PM Monday 1/11/2010
DDoS attacks on Enom and other Registrars are nothing new. According to a 2005 3Com white paper enom.com was attacked 15 days per month for each month January to August 2004. On August 9th, 2007 there was a high profile DoS attack that caused outages at Register.com. In 2009 there was an attack on 1/31/2009 that was of sufficient volume to deny access to dns services for about 8 hours. These are just some of the reports. Enom has a policy that they do not disclose specifics on the attacks, so it is unlikely that we will learn much more than what we already know. That said I believe that these may just be trial runs by persons testing to see how these companies running key parts of internet infrastructure respond to the events. Sort of the doorknob twist equivalent of cyber warfare. Of course since Enom is mum on the issue, we’ll be forced to speculate.

4:30PM Monday 1/11/2010 Wrap up Podcast:

Resources

• 3Com White Paper

12/18/2009 1414 Pacific – Services have been restored, if you note any lingering issues please contact us.