posted on February 15, 2004 06:42:59 AM new
We purchased a subscription to this site for work about a week ago. Now, when I go there I get Website not found. Can anyone here try to see if they can get on it? I don't know if the site has disappeared or if my computer is playing games. If they've suddenly gone belly up, I'd like to try to get our money back through PayPal. This just figures.
posted on February 15, 2004 07:18:46 AM new
Thanks, Helen. I wasn't even getting that notice. Work would have killed me since the whole thing was my idea. Whew, I'm off the hook.
posted on February 15, 2004 11:29:46 AM new
I'd hate to have the job of getting that back in order. That was the one thing I hated when I web mastered a web site at my prior job. Everytime the darn thing went down, someone would come running up to me saying, "The web site's down. What did you do?" What did I do? Yes, it was me. I so loved stopping everything else to figure out what the glytch might be. Oh, brother.
posted on February 16, 2004 10:15:23 AM new
This is VERY interesting. I got an email from Boxed Art. Scary! Wow, the FBI is involved. I haven't read the links Boxed Art provided, but I intend to. Here's what it said:
Dear BoxedArt Members,
This notice is to address the recent downtime of BoxedArt.com, and the Big Resources network of sites this weekend, which began Saturday, February 14, sometime before 9:00 AM EST, and lasted until late Sunday night.
At approximately 8:30am Saturday morning, February 14th, 2004, BoxedArt began losing service from our hosting provider. At such time, we immediately began contacting our host to remedy and rectify this situation. For approximately 8 hours we received no response to any pages, phone calls, or other means of communication submitted for support. Shortly after this 8th hour, we were informed by an officer of our hosting provider, Foonet, that a fiber wire had been cut and that three trucks from UUNet and TimeWarner were on scene, and that the situation was to be remedied by 5:00pm EST. By approximately 4:00pm, we were then informed that there was a power outage that was effecting 3 states that they were working quickly to repair. Based on this information, we had no alternative but to wait for news of this correction.
Then, at approximately 10:00pm, after hours had past from the timeline of correction provided to us, we were finally informed of the real reason behind the sudden and extended downtime. Our hosting provider, Foonet.net, had been raided by the FBI early Saturday morning. During this raid, the FBI shutdown the entire datacenter and seized all servers and materials. Information has been officially released by Foonet.net, on Saturday, February 15th, that all clients servers that were located inside the Foonet data center were seized during an FBI raid to collect information for the investigation of a case involving only a few of Foonet's clients, involved in IRC, and not involved with websites.
Immediately upon learning of these details the BoxedArt team banded together to move servers and restore service. However, because of the misinformation provided and lack of communication throughout the day on Saturday, we had little option but to wait the unnecessary hours for service to be restored as indicated. Because we were not made to privy to what the true situation was at the time, this left us unable to start this process any sooner than late Saturday evening. Within an hour, however, BoxedArt began migrating its existing offsite backups to an emergency life raft server at another datacenter, and began propagating its DNS changes so users could access the site again in as timely a matter as possible. As such, the majority of our members will gradually begin being able to connect to the site throughout the day on Monday. Additionally, we were unable to relay these details to our members prior to this point, not only because the information was limited to us at best, but also because, as is obvious at this point, our email servers were down as well.
As far as our preparation for this situation, let us assure you that we had all plans in place to handle ongoing DDoS Flood Attacks and Joe Job Spam Attacks, as well as all materials were maintained and stored on a backup server in order to restore service rapidly during events such as this. However, we could not prepare for the physical seizure of our servers and backup servers without warning of our host's datacenter by the FBI.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused any of our members, but our site was maintained by one of only a handful of hosting providers able to sustain the type of attacks we have undergone for nearly a year to continue to provide our generous servers to our valued members. Several other major template providers were using Foonet's services as well, so we have been attempting to provide our members with the most reliable service, unfortunately, this situation is something that we could in no way have expected. This situation has, and will continue to have, a devastating effect for obvious reasons, as well as financial consequences, on BoxedArt for some time to come, but with your continued support, we will continue to maintain the highest quality, lowest cost collection of templates and graphics for many years. So, while the fate of the Foonet datacenter remains unannounced and undecided, BoxedArt has begun the setup of a new robust anti-DDoS system to help us face whatever attacks may hit next from or competitors, and will do whatever it takes to continue to provide the best service and products at the best prices.
Whew, I'm off the hook.
Yes, it was me. I so loved stopping everything else to figure out what the glytch might be. Oh, brother.