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Six Apart, LiveJournal Hit By Denial-of-Service Attack

WEDNESDAY MAY 3 2006 6:00 AM

Submitted by WilWheaton. Edited By WilWheaton.

Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type, Typepad, and the recent buyers of Live Journal, have been hit by a massive and sophisticated Denial of Service Attack.

Since approximately 4:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time, Six Apart has been the victim of a sophisticated distributed denial of service attack. This has affected all of Six Apart's sites, causing intermittent and limited availability for TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com. Our network operations staff is working around the clock with our Internet access providers to resolve the issue. We appreciate your patience and support, and will provide updates as we have them.

I had updated my typepad blog with a post about Network Neutrality just moments before the attack began, so I just assumed that I broke the Internets with my wicked sweet prose, or the Man was serious about trying to keep me down. I'm kind of bummed to learn that the universe, contrary to all anectodal evidence, doesn't revolve around me.

Om Malik says in his blog,

How does a start-up know that it has made it big? Google and Yahoo both want to buy them… right. That is sooooo… 2005. Apparently, when your service is brought down by a massive distributed denial of service attack, you know you have joined a weird kind of hall of fame.

A few years ago, a bunch of script kiddie douchebags attacked WWdN for a couple of months. Luckily, they were really stupid and left fingerprints even I could follow, and they quickly moved on to other activities. But if someone is sophisticated enough to attack Six Apart, it's much more likely that it's an extortion scheme, similar to the ones which frequently originate in Russia using botnets and target Internet gaming companies.

9 Comments

Lout_Rampage

Dallas, TX

May 2005

MAY 03, 2006 06:08 AM

That explains why I couldn't access LiveJournal yesterday. Thanks for the heads up Wil.

xrinti

Madison, WI

April 2006

MAY 03, 2006 06:11 AM

I'm kind of bummed to learn that the universe, contrary to all anectodal evidence, doesn't revolve around me.

Ummm, I'm sorry Wil. The universe revolves around me. It only appears to revolve around you due to parallax error.

bairdduvessa

Centerville, MA

April 2005

MAY 03, 2006 06:59 AM

my livejournal has been working fine

Telltale

USA

May 2004

MAY 03, 2006 08:33 AM

I'm kind of bummed to learn that the universe, contrary to all anectodal evidence, doesn't revolve around me.

You're right, it revolves around Wesley Crusher. As soon as his character left TNG the world no longer had anything to revolve around, so it is now spiraling out of control. Hence, the troubles of our day.

My solution: Bring back Wesley Crusher, and since Wesley needs to live somewhere, Start Trek: TNG. Or at least a new Star Trek movie that doesn't deal with Kirk and Spock in their Academy days.

Hooraydiation

Boston, MA

October 2005

MAY 03, 2006 08:38 AM

It was pretty scary, knowing that anyone who was desperate to read my opinions and comic book scans was completely out of luck for that stretch of time.

_Pie_

Sykesville, MD

March 2006

MAY 03, 2006 08:53 AM

bairdduvessa said:
my livejournal has been working fine

same here

ZPO

Olympia, WA

July 2004

MAY 03, 2006 11:41 AM

More likely its some bored kid.

Hunter

SUICIDEGIRL

New York, USA

MAY 04, 2006 11:22 AM

I bet it's the large media conglomerates trying to threaten them into selling!

Eiron

Buffalo, NY

May 2006

MAY 04, 2006 12:09 PM

"Holy crap! I can't write about the movie Jenny and I went to go see last night! And how will I show people which Harry Potter house I belong to? *Dives out nearest window*"

*cough* Which is to say...