It’s Sunday afternoon. MoneySavingExpert.com is down again at the moment; as we investigate a sadly expensive solution to the DDOS attack we’ve been under since Friday 4pm. I hadn’t seen this coming. It’s shocking and debilitating. I’m writing this in the hope we’ll find a way to improve it; we’re all ready looking at solutions, but sadly they’re eye wateringly expensive.
For someone to maliciously, and deliberately try to close the site is horrifying. And the fact it can be done anonymously, with no reason or explanation is frighting. In the world of the internet we’re supposed to have unique freedom of information and access to revolutionary technology. Yet someone somewhere, by flouting the laws of different countries can anonymously kill a site. It’s horrible. And while it’s been reported to the police, that’s a forelorn hope. As mentioned we’re trying to work a solution, though for obvious reasons I won’t explain what as we’ve already seen reactive counters to earlier solutions.
For those who aren’t techie, let me explain what’s happened this way. Probably by using viruses installed on many people’s computers, someone has simulated the site being visited by billions of people; and of course the servers can’t cope and thus real visitors can’t get through. DDOS are known to happen, but we’ve been hit by a massive scale; MSE is a huge site with huge servers and can cope with large numbers of visitors, to cripple us this way has taken an attack of massive scale.
For it to coincide with the launch of the PPI reclaiming campaign is particularly galling. We’ve worked six months to prepare it and have had great publicity; I suspect this weekend’s DDOS attack has saved the banks many tens of millions of pounds. And you only really get one bite of the cherry.
My MSE techie team have worked valiantly on a rear guard action 24-7 this weekend and we’re all shattered. I’ve been trying to go out, and distract myself, as otherwise I keep calling them up and saying “any news, any news” which doesn’t really help things.
Thanks to all moneysavers who’ve offered their support by email or facebook or other ways.
I hope you’ll be reading this soon!
