6 ms·

Github is having a major service outage

22 points by kaws 13y ago

mkrecny 13y ago
Probably a stupid question, but, what are the potential motivators behind DDoS-ing Github?
- bitdiffusion 13y ago
  Two possibilities: 1. Boredom 2. Infamy (although nobody seems to claim responsibility for attacks like this so not sure how that can be a motivating factor - but who knows).
  - bradleyland 13y ago
    3. Extortion.
    - Anderkent 13y ago
      4. Competition 5. General maliciousness (wohoo I managed to annoy so many people)
- timmorgan 13y ago
  GitHub has competitors.
  - ethomson 13y ago
    Which competitors in particular are you suggesting might be DDoS'ing them?
  - selectnull 13y ago
    An interesting idea and I have honest question: would anyone in the industry risk DDOS-ing a competitor? I mean, sooner or later they would get caught, the news would spread like a wildfire, that would really be great PR for the attacked. Any ideas on that? Does anyone have a case where that actually happened?
    - Anderkent 13y ago
      >I mean, sooner or later they would get caught, the news would spread like a wildfire, that would really be great PR for the attacked. That's nowhere near certain.
dkoch 13y ago
I wonder how many people who use Github as part of their deployment work flow are impacted by outages like this. I know git is distributed, but I can imagine people with scripts that default to pulling from a github.com origin having to scramble to reconfigure.
- wldlyinaccurate 13y ago
  This is exactly why we have an internal system which mirrors repos. We've never had our build/deploy process interrupted by GitHub outages because we always use the internal mirror.
theboss 13y ago
Can I ask here? Why do a lot of companies insist on keeping their code on GitHub? It seems expensive and they have many service outages from DDoS attacks. It seems like someone could set up their 10 different git servers for a fraction of the price and have greater up-time due to redundancy. And securing your own isn't rocket science either... What am I not seeing that is the big draw to github?
- selectnull 13y ago
  There are a lot of companies out there who do not have a system administrator capable of setting up or maintaining (the latter is more difficult and time consuming) its own server. GitHub is a solution to that and is quite cheap.
  - theboss 13y ago
    Is it cheap? If I was hypothetically an app company with many customers I could easily have a thousand private repos. When I checked github (I tried to check again now but their site is down) it would cost something like $1,500 bucks...It seems like I would be getting gouged.
    - wldlyinaccurate 13y ago
      A thousand repos is a bit much, don't you think? I've worked for some pretty big agencies before and the number of active projects has never been more than 50-60. That's only going to cost you around $50/month. The reason I say active is because even if you do have a thousand repos, you're surely not maintaining all of them - that would be insane. You would probably have 950 repos which would be better off archived, backed-up, and removed from GitHub.
    - selectnull 13y ago
      On surface, 1500 bucks seems very expensive. But if I had 1500 private repos (supposedly that means 1500 or little bit less clients) I'm making so much money that 1500 bucks/month looks very cheap. And still much cheaper than paying for full time sys admin (which doesn't mean that you don't employ one or several). Having said that, personally, I prefer BitBucket pricing scheme where I can have unlimited private repos and paying per number of users.
bratsche 13y ago
This happens every other week. Does it really need to be posted on Hacker News every time? If you happen to be using Github at the time of the outage, you're going to notice. If you don't happen to be using Github at that time then it doesn't affect you. This doesn't qualify for the news part of Hacker News.

22 points by kaws 13y ago

mkrecny 13y ago

Probably a stupid question, but, what are the potential motivators behind DDoS-ing Github?

bitdiffusion 13y ago
Two possibilities: 1. Boredom 2. Infamy (although nobody seems to claim responsibility for attacks like this so not sure how that can be a motivating factor - but who knows).
- bradleyland 13y ago
  3. Extortion.
  - Anderkent 13y ago
    4. Competition 5. General maliciousness (wohoo I managed to annoy so many people)
timmorgan 13y ago
GitHub has competitors.
- ethomson 13y ago
  Which competitors in particular are you suggesting might be DDoS'ing them?
- selectnull 13y ago
  An interesting idea and I have honest question: would anyone in the industry risk DDOS-ing a competitor? I mean, sooner or later they would get caught, the news would spread like a wildfire, that would really be great PR for the attacked. Any ideas on that? Does anyone have a case where that actually happened?
  - Anderkent 13y ago
    >I mean, sooner or later they would get caught, the news would spread like a wildfire, that would really be great PR for the attacked. That's nowhere near certain.

dkoch 13y ago

I wonder how many people who use Github as part of their deployment work flow are impacted by outages like this. I know git is distributed, but I can imagine people with scripts that default to pulling from a github.com origin having to scramble to reconfigure.

wldlyinaccurate 13y ago
This is exactly why we have an internal system which mirrors repos. We've never had our build/deploy process interrupted by GitHub outages because we always use the internal mirror.

theboss 13y ago

Can I ask here? Why do a lot of companies insist on keeping their code on GitHub? It seems expensive and they have many service outages from DDoS attacks. It seems like someone could set up their 10 different git servers for a fraction of the price and have greater up-time due to redundancy. And securing your own isn't rocket science either... What am I not seeing that is the big draw to github?

selectnull 13y ago
There are a lot of companies out there who do not have a system administrator capable of setting up or maintaining (the latter is more difficult and time consuming) its own server. GitHub is a solution to that and is quite cheap.
- theboss 13y ago
  Is it cheap? If I was hypothetically an app company with many customers I could easily have a thousand private repos. When I checked github (I tried to check again now but their site is down) it would cost something like $1,500 bucks...It seems like I would be getting gouged.
  - wldlyinaccurate 13y ago
    A thousand repos is a bit much, don't you think? I've worked for some pretty big agencies before and the number of active projects has never been more than 50-60. That's only going to cost you around $50/month. The reason I say active is because even if you do have a thousand repos, you're surely not maintaining all of them - that would be insane. You would probably have 950 repos which would be better off archived, backed-up, and removed from GitHub.
  - selectnull 13y ago
    On surface, 1500 bucks seems very expensive. But if I had 1500 private repos (supposedly that means 1500 or little bit less clients) I'm making so much money that 1500 bucks/month looks very cheap. And still much cheaper than paying for full time sys admin (which doesn't mean that you don't employ one or several). Having said that, personally, I prefer BitBucket pricing scheme where I can have unlimited private repos and paying per number of users.

bratsche 13y ago

This happens every other week. Does it really need to be posted on Hacker News every time? If you happen to be using Github at the time of the outage, you're going to notice. If you don't happen to be using Github at that time then it doesn't affect you. This doesn't qualify for the news part of Hacker News.