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October 03, 2004
WorldPay DDoS attack
Last night WorldPay experienced what they described as a "planned and large scale Denial of Service" which resulted in their administration systems being "severely disrupted ".
Whilst it's obviously disturbing to see a processor hit in this way, I can only hope that WorldPay have the resources at least to undergo large-scale IP filtering to block out the attack the laborious way, rather than simply taking their servers offline until everything calms down - which could take days with a severe DDoS.
It obviously does raise concerns regarding protection of merchant services - in general - in the face of concerted DDoS attacks, and other forms of internet sabotage.
The admin system is working again this morning - and I sincerely hope that this is because of high investment that WorldPay puts into it's server and network infrastructure. After all, the amount of money that WorldPay charge is pretty considerable - large set-up fees, plus large transaction fees. But there's a theory that when you're paying high fees for a service, that you are therefore paying for quality. With regards to WorldPay I sincerely hope that statement is justified as true.
For the records, here's a copy of the WorldPay e-mail:
Dear Customer,
We regret that access to our payment and administration systems is severely disrupted due to a planned and large scale Denial of Service (DDOS) attack by a third party.
Our payment and administration systems are working, safe and secure, but the networks around them are being flooded with requests on a huge scale, causing 'service denials'. We are processing payments, but far slower and fewer than we normally would.
We are executing our contingency plans to move to full restoration of the service but cannot at this point in time predict when all customers will have the service restored without further interruption.
While attacks of this type can be anticipated, it does take time to identify and deal with the exact nature of a particular attack. We are doing everything that is possible to restore a full service as soon as is possible.
PLEASE NOTE: although we are subject to a "denial-of-service" attack, the integrity and security of our systems and data is in no way compromised.
Please check the Customer Management System portal page at www.worldpay.com/admin where we post information about System Status on a regular basis.
Thank you,
Ann Clarke
Customer Operations Director
WorldPay Limited
Posted by at October 3, 2004 09:01 AM
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