Namecheap, a leading domain registrar and web hosting company, came under a DDoS attack today. This immediately resulted in the inaccessibility of a number of sites hosted on Namecheap.
To give you an idea of the sheer size of Namecheap, the company hosts more than 3 million domains and is both an ICANN-accredited web registrat and a web host. A web registrar essentially allows you access a website by punching in a URL, rather than having to provide the exact IP address to access it.
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack was launched on Namecheap earlier today by unknown entities. The attack was targeted at the primary DNS servers of the company, aiming to disrupt access to sites hosted by Namecheap. For a brief period, a number of Namecheap-hosted domains did become unavailable.
But the company actively fought back the onslaught and was able to thwart it completely within no time. During the brief out-of-control spell, you may have been unable to access some sites or services which are hosted on Namecheap servers. The latest updates from the company confirm that the situation is under control. The most recent update states, “We have successfully mitigated most of the DDoS attack and services are returning to normal. Services may be somewhat degraded while everything returns to normal over the next 60 minutes. Thank you for your understanding and patience during this difficult time.”
However, if you have your site hosted on a Namecheap server and if such a situation arises again, you can always switch the DNS system. An official blog post from Namecheap explains how to do this:
“If your affected domain name is using DNS V2, it is possible to switch it to our backup DNS V1 system. It can be done in the following way:
- Sign in to your Namecheap account
- Select Manage Domains in the My Account area. It can be reached by clicking on your username on the black bar located at the top of the page
- Click on the domain you wish to modify and select Switch to DNS System V 1
- Put a check mark on Transfer your domain to DNS System V 1
- Click Save Changes”
Source: Namecheap
Courtesy: TechCrunch
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