GetResponse CEO Statement Regarding the DDoS Attack.
Dear GetResponse Customer,
As you may know, GetResponse has had a pretty rough weekend… We suffered a major outage
caused by a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on an unprecedented scale, which has flooded
our network and our data center (Windstream) with malicious traffic.
What happened?
On Saturday, after hours of working together with our data center Windstream (including their
directors and VP-level executives), we received information that they have failed to mitigate
the attack and of their decision to block our network connectivity until a powerful DDoS
mitigation service can be fully implemented.
When GetResponse went down, the morale of the GetResponse community didn’t. We saw an
amazing display of support and we would like to thank our customers for rooting for us.
What’s the current status?
We brought many of the services back online on Sunday (websites, web subscriptions, API, web
forms, surveys, landing pages).
We had another attack on Monday, but we fully mitigated it, with no downtime, thanks to our new
mitigation solution.
We are still working on resolving issues with email deliveries and anticipate a complete resolution
within the next couple of days. We are literally working around the clock with VP-level executives
from our data center and DDoS mitigation partners.
What is GetResponse doing to mitigate the attacks?
Over the past 15 years, we have repelled many DDoS attacks using our infrastructure. More
recently, we employed CloudFlare Enterprise solution to help us to deal with attacks in March and
April. Unfortunately, the scale of last weekend’s attack was so huge that it overran our current
mitigation solution, and we needed to come up with a new plan.
After a conference call with our data center, within minutes we got in touch with Akamai, the
world’s leading DDoS mitigation provider, with 1.8 Tbps mitigation bandwidth. We asked them to
deploy an “always on” clean-pipe DDoS scrubbing service for GetResponse. This is the most
advanced type of protection available on the market (also most expensive). It scrubs all inbound
traffic for malicious packets of data and returns only “clean” traffic to our data center.
In total, we are spending close to half a million dollars in mitigation solutions, hardware,
connectivity and other upgrades.
Why was GetResponse attacked?
This wasn’t the first attack GetResponse has encountered recently. We endured several other
attacks in March and April. And we weren’t alone…
Over the last two months, a criminal has targeted many other large Internet companies, putting
them offline. These include Meetup, Shutterstock, MailChimp, Fotolia, Basecamp, oDesk,
SurveyGizmo, MadMimi, OkCupid, HootSite, Typepad, Elance, Aweber and others. It is
unfortunate, but these types of attacks are becoming much more frequent in today’s environment.
Why would anyone attack well-meaning companies, disrupting their business?
This email explains it all:
Subject: DDoS attack, warning
I don't have to explain myself anymore. I will stop the attack for 1.2 Bitcoin (≈ $750).
Your network will be safe from further attacks coming from several botnets, think
twice before making your final decision, as even the best global DDoS mitigation
won't be able to handle easily the incoming new Amp. methods.
Let me know if you are interested in my offer.
We weren’t interested, and won’t ever be, even if they continue to attack us. The low “offer” ($750)
was just bait; we know they’d come back for more. And paying would only encourage them to
attack other companies. Besides, we are confident that we can protect ourselves in the future with
the mitigation plan we’ve put in place. But above all, paying criminals is simply the wrong thing to
do.
I sincerely apologize for this outage. We care about you, our customers, and realize you rely on us
to get your emails out to the world. Since the attacks, we’ve been working around the clock to get
mitigation in place.
I thank you for your trust, your support and your loyalty during these difficult moments.
Regards,
Simon Grabowski
CEO
GetResponse
PS: If you have any questions about this issue, please contact our Customer Service Department
at support.getresponse.com (GetResponse 360 customers, please contact your Account Managers).
Posted Apr 29, 2014 - 22:59 CEST