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Github.com unavailable due to a large DDoS attack
- spongle 13y agoAgain... personally I can't see why anyone would want to DDoS github unless they are just being an asshat.
- locofacetwice 13y agoHackers do that to show next potential client how good their service is.
- mataug 13y agoMany would just do it as a challenge, Yes they are being a asshat, but they just don't realise that.
- blumkvist 13y agogreat advertising for DDoS protection services.
- Karunamon 13y agoConsidering that Prolexic isn't exactly keeping Github up, not really!
- davidw 13y ago> they just don't realise that Their parents didn't raise them very well if they don't realize that denying access to an important resource to tons of people is really, really lame.
- prawn 13y agoI've heard about organised crime doing this sort of thing and asking for payment to stop.
- himal 13y agoHappened to 'The Million Dollar Homepage'[1]. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage#DDoS_attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage#DDo...
- babuskov 13y agoSeeing how many people (ab)use github as a free file/web hosting service for various crap, it is strange we don't see such attacks more often.
- kineticfocus 13y agoAgreed... but sites like these are probably targets for a bunch of reasons... http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/02/dev-site-behind-apple-facebook-hacks-didnt-know-it-was-booby-trapped/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/02/dev-site-behind-appl...
- zeckalpha 13y agoMy guess is it is accidental.
- jmhobbs 13y agoAs in, "oops I typed in the wrong address for my botnet and didn't notice for two hours" ?
- bzbarsky 13y agoThe problem is, even just being an asshat is enough problem if there are enough of them. Mozilla has had the same issue: every so often someone tries to DDoS bugzilla.mozilla.org, causing it to get all slow and hard to use. :(
- richardwhiuk 13y agoThe second in two days, github is getting increasingly unreliable - https://status.github.com/messages https://status.github.com/messages. Also, I'd be interested to know how complete lack of service is 'mitigating a DDOS attack' - to me it sounds like 'successful DDOS attack'.
- kevingadd 13y agoFor a large DDOS attack there aren't any easy ways to only drop the DDOS traffic - especially if it's hard to identify the DDOS traffic in the first place. If they're getting more 'bad' incoming traffic than their connections can handle I don't know how they'd drop that stuff - they have to receive the packets before they can filter them. Maybe their bandwidth provider has tricks for this...
- regecks 13y agoThere are certainly providers that have networks you can hide behind which can filter+absorb DDoS traffic for you.
- daenney 13y agoThat doesn't work in all cases. If you can't distinguish between good and bad traffic or if it isn't specifically targeting an entity it becomes much more difficult to handle. It also depends on the ingenuity of the DDoS attack, none of which are known to the public so you can't really say anything sensible about it. If the anti-DDoS mitigating tools they are using aren't working nor is using other services like Prolexic that's usually hint enough that this isn't particularly common or easily filtered out. You can gripe on all the companies and tools if you will but a good DDoS is quite a bit more complex than 'just filter away the bad crap'.
- Terretta 13y ago> you can't really say anything sensible about it See #4 of the 12 timeless networking truths: (4) Some things in life can never be fully appreciated nor understood unless experienced firsthand. Some things in networking can never be fully understood by someone who neither builds commercial networking equipment nor runs an operational network. -- http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/10/2/rfc-1925-the-twelve-timeless-networking-truths.html http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/10/2/rfc-1925-the-twelv...
- warpech 13y agoI bet they DDoS GitHub with use of tools obtained from GitHub
- mathnode 13y agooh thank fuck, I was getting annoyed that it was me, who was screwing up my homebrew install. For once it's not my fault!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- gsharma 13y agoThey are back up for me now.
- maaaats 13y agoHmm, it's scary how much this affects us. We can't push latest bugfix to GitHub. Azure cannot deploy it. I cannot run bower_install on the project I would be working on in the meantime.
- locofacetwice 13y agoStart using TFS :D
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoKeeping code in sync with your colleagues should not be a major problem, given how you should be able to sync with each other (distributed CVS, etc). Azure... I don't know how that works. Heroku would work without github being online, since you'd push to github - maybe that'd be an idea? bower_install is annoying, yeah; it should allow for a backup location (s) to resolve dependencies. Maven allows people to configure multiple repositories, which are often mirrored against each other while hosted by vastly different parties; if one repo mirror is offline, there's a dozen others available, in a lot of cases. For those components, github is a single point of failure.
- ioquatix 13y agoAnd here we all are, using "git", a "decentralised" source code management tool.
- api 13y agoIf the network doesn't permit decentralized networking, then decentralized tools don't matter. http://blog.zerotier.com/post/58157836374/op-ed-internet-centralization-is-not-a-conspiracy http://blog.zerotier.com/post/58157836374/op-ed-internet-cen...
- astrodust 13y agoYou can always push to GitHub and your own private repo, then deploy from that private repo.
- alex_doom 13y ago
- kozhevnikov 13y agoOut of curiosity, to those who prefer Bitbucket to GitHub, how often (if ever) does it (Bitbucket) go down due to DDoS or otherwise?
- daenney 13y agoBitbucket has had it's own fair share of issues, let alone the "we're pulling Bitbucket offline for 5hrs to move to a new datacenter" debacle not so long ago. I understand why they had to do it but it is indicative of some issues with their architecture. They probably haven't gone offline through a DDoS yet because they're just not that popular to warrant an attack but I wouldn't bet on it that Bitbucket would fare any better.
- bluedino 13y agoIt's not fair to compare scheduled downtime with being down for a few random hours because of an attack (or any other reason)
- chrismorgan 13y agoGitHub was also offline for a not inconsiderable period of time fairly recently for a datacentre move.
- vinight 13y agobitbucket goes down just as much, if not more than github. still love em though. but they arent entirely honest about downtime. sometimes they are down, ppl are tweeting it and status page is all green lights. but still love em.
- bscofield 13y agoI'm surprised there's only one "git is distributed" comment thread so far, but as a reminder: http://rubygems.org/gems/deus_ex http://rubygems.org/gems/deus_ex may help with getting deploys running during a GitHub outage. Usage instructions are at http://rubydoc.info/gems/deus_ex/0.0.2/frames http://rubydoc.info/gems/deus_ex/0.0.2/frames.
- reycharles 13y agoThe github issue tracker and wiki is not distributed as far as I know, though.
- bscofield 13y agoSure, but that's not the point of this gem. This just allows deploys to continue when GH is unavailable.
- josegonzalez 13y agoThe wiki is a git repository, so in effect it is distributed. The issue tracker is not, unfortunately, but neither are most issue trackers.
- tenfingers 13y agoThe solution is to use a bug tracker within the SCM: http://bugseverywhere.org/ http://bugseverywhere.org/ (my personal favorite, but there are 3/4 other options that you can look into). Not only it does offer distributed bug tracking on the command line (without breaking your workflow), but it implicitly allows to isolate bugs to branches. You can fix a bug in a branch, and a subsequent merge of the changeset will automatically fix the current branch. I don't understand why these projects are so underrated. In "early git times", distributed bug tracking on top of git was quite a hot subject. They solve many issues nicely. Github might be a "nifty" viewer, and I do host projects on github for added visibility (by simply using a second push remote), but that's about it. I find "tig" and "bugseverywhere" to complement git nicely and work much better than any web browser could.
- phaer 13y agoIs there a git tool which syncs remotes? I could set up a second remote for the times github is down, but how do i share it with my team members? Does everybody need to add it manually? That could become tedious with larger teams or more remotes. Plus: There are a bunch of decentralized issue trackers, can any of them sync with github? Is that possible with their api?
- mcculley 13y ago> Plus: There are a bunch of decentralized issue trackers, can any of them sync with github? Is that possible with their api? Last time I looked, their issues are not stored in git itself. This is something that has kept me from using their issue tracker for my projects as it encourages lockin.
- dpweb 13y agomaybe the fact they have to deal with non http incoming traffic makes them an easier target?
- fauigerzigerk 13y agoDDOSing Github reminds me of a study I read about a while ago. It showed that many burglars tend to break into homes close to their own instead of targeting wealthier neighborhoods. Many of the reasons for that will be very different from this attack on Github as there is no money in attacking Github. But one reason may be similar: Lack of imagination, or in other words stupidity.
- stevoski 13y agoThese problems coincided with me trying to get started with Git and GitHub for the first time. I had a perplexing, frustrating day.
- CmonDev 13y agoTry BitBucket, same stuff productivity-wise plus private repos.
- ssmoot 13y agoBitbucket: $10/month for 10 users and Unlimited private repositories. Github: $200/month for Unlimited users and 125 private repositories. If you're a team of 10 or less, have a few dozen clients and dozens more supporting libraries in a small company Bitbucket blows Github out of the water. For the same $200/month Bitbucket also offers unlimited users (again, with unlimited private repositories). I wouldn't call Github's pricing unreasonable. But I have learned to appreciate Bitbucket's service (they're really on top of things on their Twitter feed) and their pricing is lunch money for a day (as opposed to skipping lunches for a month). Highly recommended.
- bigdubs 13y agoWe switched from Bitbucket to Github because of Bitbucket's reliability issues. YMMV.
- ssmoot 13y agoI've seen a lot of stuff in their Twitter feed they seem to work through, but I've never actually run into any issues. So I've interpreted that as transparency I guess. Been with 'em for maybe a year now? Never had a failed push or pull. That's happened a number of times with Github but I wouldn't suggest it's been damaging to the business. Only a minor inconvenience at times. So with your anecdote and my anecdote, we get to call this "data" now right? :-)
- garblegarble 13y ago
- CmonDev 13y agoIf online code availability is _that_ important for you then just push code to both GitHub and BitBucket.
- galaktor 13y agoSince the VCS are distributed, you could always mirror a repository on a NAS at home or something. Edit: I might have misread the parent's comment. If CmonDev was referring to public availability, just a local repo won't do. It depends on who needs access to the code etc
- saltyknuckles 13y agoQuick blame it on Ruby.
- saltyknuckles 13y agoBut hurt anyone? lol
- anentropic 13y agoCan anyone explain why Github is a DDoS target? Seems a bit pointless
- moron4hire 13y agoThe great thing about GitHub is that it's still Git. If GitHub is down, that just means that your central publishing site is down. It doesn't mean that you're developers can't work. They can still share amongst themselves. Like they probably should be doing even when GitHub is up.
- memset 13y agoHow would this work? (This is a serious question.) Would each of us set up each other's internal IP addresses (192.168.0.101, etc) as remote repositories? Would each of us run a git repository on our own boxes? Or would we set one up on our own AWS box or something?
- bigdubs 13y agoYep, you set up each developers machine as a remote, but you pull from them (rather than push). Helps to pull to a separate branch though.
- frytaz 13y agoSetup internal dev box, push code there and from there to github...
- moron4hire 13y agoWell, ideally you'd have DNS setup internally so you don't have to use raw IP addresses, but essentially yes, you map each of the people with which you're collaborating as remote repositories. Because they are remote repositories, all on their own. There is nothing special between your repository on your machine and the repository on github.
- joshdance 13y agoI'm a rookie so how does Github being down for a few hours cause problems? I push to Github a few times a day, but if I don't, I just push to Github the next day. Are there teams that need to be in constant sync pushing and pulling multiple times an hour?
- mmgutz 13y agoIf you deploy from git, like many of us do, and you're in the middle of pulling down dependencies from github .. It's happened a couple of times. We moved to our own private server with forks of any dependencies we need.
- ommm 13y agoAnyone dealing with production code should do this, in my opinion. Hope for the best but plan for the worst.
- sandyarmstrong 13y agoIf you depend on any of these: Issues: hard to fix a bug you can't read about Pull Requests: code review is a lot less fun without a tool for commenting, without something triggering your build server to verify each commit, etc Releases: distributing builds to QA or users is all of the sudden more awkward than you're used to It's not really about pushing and fetching code. :-)
- trebor 13y agoI think it's interesting to note how people have gone to expecting 5-digit reliability out of an internet service. Not only is GitHub under fire, but the whole IPSec industry gets blamed. Back when my dad installed physical PBXes, the big ones that could be the size of a mainframe, uptime the biggest argument: they had to have reliability to five nines (99.99999%, if you don't get it). Then when cellphones first came out, everyone got lackadaisical about dropped calls. And overnight an entire industry worried about reliability "to five nines" changed, and "whatever, it's a new service, you've got to expect some difficulties." The internet started with relatively low reliability. No web host I've ever seen has truly been able to achieve 99.999% uptime. And yet, when GitHub goes down under a "large DDOS attack" but still manages to maintain 99.85% uptime over the last month (with several DDOS-caused outages) everyone comes out of the woodwork to complain. After all, it isn't as-if hosting a massive service while keeping everything secure and running happily is an easy thing. If you're tired of GitHub outages, then get a Bitbucket account, or host your own Git repository for backup. What serious developer, or service, would keep all their eggs in one basket if they really depended on the uptime of just one centralized service?