Volusion Servers Down Again

[cw1865]

Well there are two sides to every story, received a mass e-mail from Volusion today, one thing about them, they DO communicate (I get their status updates on twitter as well). Here is the e-mail from their CEO today. I figure if I can be critical, I can at least be fair and show you their side of it as well:

Dear Customer,

Volusion has recently been the target of a number of Distributed
Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. These can take many forms, but one thing they
have in common is that they render a website and/or its resource provider(s)
semi-operable/inoperable by means of traffic overload (more about DDoS attacks
here: Denial-of-service attack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Since the time
that the first major attacks were performed several years ago, technological
development and best practices have greatly reduced and even eliminated some
attack methods, leading many to regard such events as a thing of the past.
Perpetrators, however, have responded with innovation of their own, and their
activity has recently been on the rise. Even major providers like Twitter
(Neowin.net - Twitter suffers Denial of Service attack) and others
(DDoS attacks are bigger threat than hackers planned - Feature - Techworld.com)
have been taken down for extended periods.

While some providers are luckier than others at avoiding attacks, none are
immune to them. Preparedness is a key factor in quick mitigation and resolution,
but the extent of the related service interruption is largely determined by the
sophistication, resources, and determination of the perpetrator(s). In our case,
the recent attacks have morphed in complexity with each attack and the
perpetrators have proven thus far to be uncommonly resilient.

We fully understand the negative impact these events have on your business,
which is why we are working closely with our upstream providers and the
authorities to identify and block the source of the attacks, and pursue all
means available of ceasing the attacks while minimizing the impact of future
occurrences. Over the past two weeks we have made several significant
improvements to our infrastructure by implementing key enterprise monitoring and
security systems that enable us to respond to and limit the effects of these
attacks.

While we cannot promise to eliminate these types of attacks, please know that we
are fully focused on mitigating them and minimizing their impact on your
business. In the meantime, you can always view the latest information at
Volusion Status

Kindest Regards,

Kevin Sproles
Founder/Chief Executive Officer
Volusion, Inc

[kgun]

Should they revise their uptime guarantee?

[cw1865]

They can warrant in any manner that they see fit, but that warranty/guarantee should be clearly defined so that a user can judge exactly when a breach occurs, and the remedy that the user will be entitled to in the event of a breach.

[justfactsplease]

My friend was a developer at Volusion until he and almost the entire development staff were laid off in January. He told me the DDoS was a cover story. The real problem was that Volusion management forced its software developers to release new software before it was ready, within a framework of old and poorly designed software written ten years ago by a 17 year old.

[avolusionmerchant]

What's the deal with Volusion and Authorize.Net. I haven't been able to process cards for almost a week. Volusion support tells me the problem is with Authorize.Net. When I call Authorze.Net they say everything is OK, that the problem is with Volusion. I'm getting a complete run around while my business is at a stand still. Is anyone else having the same problem?

[cw1865]

I am not experiencing that issue. First thing is to check your 'keys' and make sure they are correct and weren't inadvertently changed, also be aware that volusion is terminating v4 stores, if applicable upgrade immediately, if you're beyond v4, don't worry about it.

Check the SSL's, make sure they're working, on my v4 conversion, I had that issue.

Volusion also threw PCI compliance issues on us in February......

With respect to authorize.net make sure you're not inadvertently in test mode.

[cw1865]

My friend was a developer at Volusion until he and almost the entire development staff were laid off in January. He told me the DDoS was a cover story. The real problem was that Volusion management forced its software developers to release new software before it was ready, within a framework of old and poorly designed software written ten years ago by a 17 year old.

Perhaps it was, but at that time, rackspace and volusion were in cahoots, and rackspace got hit, the denial of service attacks originating from china, allegedly, drew the attention of sec state hillary clinton....