Authorize.net Down

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Posted by MrMcGoo, 08-01-2004, 02:20 PM
Is it just me.. I have not been able to reach Authorize.net all day ?????
Posted by development, 08-01-2004, 02:28 PM
Yes it is down also. Lee Hinman lee@srifl.com Developer of 1st Portal to get Muyltiple quote for Made to Spec
Posted by blockcipher, 08-01-2004, 02:36 PM
I am not able to get in either.
Posted by Matt, 08-01-2004, 02:48 PM
Yep...down for me as well
Posted by Vortech, 08-01-2004, 04:08 PM
We called and this is what we were told and posted to our forum: I wanted to let everyone know that Authorize.net has been down for at least the past 2 hours and they are currently under a DDoS attack. This will prevent us from taking sign ups paying by credit card at this time. Also, any resellers that utilize Authorize.net will not be able to receive any new sign ups paying by credit card. I just spoke with a rep at Authorize.net and they currently do not have an ETA as to when they we will be back online. http://forum.vortechhosting.com/show...&threadid=8141 Still down for us as well.
Posted by MrMcGoo, 08-01-2004, 04:18 PM
Been more that 2 hours...although I did get one transaction through
Posted by thetopguy, 08-01-2004, 05:05 PM
Two hours? I could never go with a company like that. I actually wanted to use them because I thought they were the only ones out there. After meeting with Corey, I learned about my options and chose Linkpoint. In the past 5 months, they have never been down, even with the two major upgrades. Yes there were times that I could not access my administrative records but as far as not being able to process payments, that has never happened. I do not think that Linkpoint has ever been in that predicament.
Posted by remcom, 08-01-2004, 05:57 PM
authorize.net is big, you cant really stop a ddos attack, if linkpoint got ddos's I bet they'd be down too
Posted by fraudgate, 08-01-2004, 06:24 PM
We've used Authorize.net for over a year now and haven't had any noticeable downtime until now. I hope they get this resolved quickly though.
Posted by fraudgate, 08-01-2004, 07:20 PM
Although Authorize's site is down I think the gateway is still functional. We just processed a few orders.
Posted by MrMcGoo, 08-01-2004, 10:37 PM
Well my gateway bills went through so I am a happy camper...
Posted by bilalk, 08-01-2004, 11:23 PM
We just had an order go through as well, although the e-mail notification seemed a little slower than usual.
Posted by blockcipher, 08-02-2004, 10:39 AM
I am able to reach their site now.
Posted by cdgcommerce, 08-02-2004, 04:53 PM
I don't think that ANY gateway is without the occasional downtime. It doesn't matter how big or small... they are all subject to the same types of issues from time to time. For instance, I saw this thread on Linkpoint about a 24 hour outage they had and other downtime issues that happened in the past: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/archive/thread/show/31652 If you are looking for the absolutely highest uptime on a gateway, I'd suggest CyberSource. They have the best long term track record of any system that I've seen, mostly owing to the nature of their high-end clientele. Up until now, it has mostly been used by enterprise-level customers but it has three redundant CISP-compliant data centers with triple-redundancy and they process far more transaction volume than any other gateway - including Authorize.Net, Linkpoint and others.
Posted by thetopguy, 08-02-2004, 05:40 PM
Well that was over 2 years ago. You are right they have a scehduled maintenance but I have never seen them use it. I actually called them this morning because of the problems with authorize.net. I was afraid it might spill over. I had not idea what a DDoS attack was. They said that if an attack happened, the server that was being targeted would be shut down & dealt with. DDoS attacks are not an issue with Linkpoint fortunately. I doubt they will tell me how many places they have servers but I could guess a few places right now after a few meetings I have had with them. I do remember when the authorize.net gateway was down around November as well. I just want to say I have been more than happy with Linkpoint and we have not had any problems with downtime. I think we will stay with them for a very long time. I could never afford to lose a few hours of sales. Other places might but this is my reputation on the line.
Posted by cdgcommerce, 08-02-2004, 08:41 PM
They said that if an attack happened, the server that was being targeted would be shut down & dealt with. The unfortunate problem with a DDoS attack is that it is a Distributed Denial of Service attack... which means that the attacks originate through a variety of different IP's and networks. Thus, there isn't just "one server" to shut down, by the very nature of this type of attack. So it isn't just a matter of blocking some specific IP to resolve it. DDoS issues are the same kinds of problems that used to plague 2Checkout. They are ways to counter these kinds of attacks, of course, but it isn't always a trivial task. I do sincerely hope that Linkpoint never has to go through a DDoS issue but I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that they are "not an issue" - let's just hope that no one ever tries to test that theory, for the benefit of all merchants using that system or any other commercial payment gateway.
Posted by lloyd_miller, 09-17-2004, 08:56 AM
[QUOTE]I wanted to let everyone know that Authorize.net has been down for at least the past 2 hours and they are currently under a DDoS attack. [QUOTE] What is a DDoS attack???! Is it purposeful vandalism? What does it mean? Lloyd Miller
Posted by cdgcommerce, 09-17-2004, 09:53 AM
A DDOS attack is a Distributed Denial of Service attack and yes - it is purposeful vandalism. In a nutshell, here is one example of how it works. Numerous computers - sometimes workstations at universities, or individual PC's connected to broadband DSL & cable connections - are compromised and scripts are imbedded that can take control... often unbeknownst to the unwitting users. Then... at a given interval of time, a signal is sent and all of these compromised PC's start to send out traffic to the target server or network. Often times, the packets that are sent have bogus return IP's on them and so the end result is that the targeted server or network "hangs" and tries to wait for an acknowledgement back that will never come. Eventually it times out but in the mean time, CPU and bandwidth is being used up. Multiply that by a factor of hundreds or many thousands (or tens of thousands) of simultaneous such requests and it can quickly slow down a server(s) and bring it to a point where service is so slow that it effectively "stops working" for legitimate users. The root of the problem with DDOS attacks is that it sometimes requires human analysis to analyze the pattern of requests and to determine a means of deflecting/dropping/blocking the bogus IP requests while allowing the legitimate ones to progress through. There are some automated tools available to help reduce the chances or effectiveness of a DDOS attack but no matter how you look at - it is a big problem and apparently no one is immune to it. Some of the largest e-tailers on the Internet (Fortune 500's) have been hit with DDOS attacks and been taken down for hours - even a day or more. In addition, it seems at this point that most payment gateways have been targeted at least once. And the ones that haven't, likely will be at some future point as it seems like some of these DDOS culprits are just hitting them one by one.
Posted by lloyd_miller, 09-17-2004, 10:09 AM
Who would bother to commit this sort of vandalism? Is there a secret commercial purpose? Competition from other services trying to shake loose potential customers? Anti-computer exptremists like the UniBomber? Lloyd Miller
Posted by cdgcommerce, 09-17-2004, 10:16 AM
Lloyd, you ask a great question. And I don't know if we'll ever know the reasons "why" for some of these attacks. There have been a few that have done it for commercial reasons -trying to extort a big company into paying $$$ for them to stop the attack or not attack in the first place. But some of the others might just be disgruntled ex-merchants or just folks who want to see if they can actually do it or not. Hard to say, sometimes. But the one thing that I will say is that if some of the people who have the technical skills to accomplish these DDOS attacks - applied their skills towards an above-board profession, I bet they could accomplish some great things instead of causing chaos.
Posted by thetopguy, 09-17-2004, 10:19 AM
I still do not know how you do it. My customers rely on me to provide them services and products. If they could not pay because of the gateway that would have a negative relfection on myself and my companies. It seems that the gateway has been down four times in the past year alone. And now reading that other post regarding cutting jobs makes me wonder if authorize.net can actually keep up with the times? I almost chose them but after having a discussion with Corey from http://www.merchantaccounts4less.com/ I decided on choosing LinkPoint. The integration was a bit difficult but Corey let me borrow his programmers since they are skilled with ASP and the integration. No other problems and very happy with them. I can only hope that authorize.net comes back up soon for everyone's sake. Seems this industry is having way too many problems lately. I doubt any of the competition even has the time to consider causing such attacks. They are probably too busy to make sure it does not happen to them
Posted by CyberSEAL, 09-17-2004, 10:28 AM
Anet has been down for 19 hours now. Pathetic.
Posted by Vortech, 09-17-2004, 10:29 AM
Yea they have been getting out of hand with the downtime. DDOS or not they should be able to do something to keep it up. Grrr.
Posted by thewitt, 09-17-2004, 10:29 AM
These are very painful outages for us. Many thousand dollars a day in lost sales. We'll be bringing up a backup payment processor very soon. We suggested that they institute full blocking on all IPs that are not registered with them as customers. This would greatly reduce the chances of an DDOS attack. -t
Posted by cdgcommerce, 09-17-2004, 10:30 AM
I'm quite sure that Authorize.Net can keep up with the times, but we'll just have to see what they say about this most recent issue. Given that nearly 100,000+ merchants are being affected by this issue - I'm sure that they are doing everything possible to rectify the problem as quickly as possible. I have worked with nearly a dozen different payment gateways over the years - at least half of them have been hit with DDOS attacks and the rest have never been hit by one and thus I can't tell you what their response would have been. If I had to pick one gateway as being the most reliable and redundant overall - I'd have to pick CyberSource. They have three redundant CISP-certified data centers and process more transaction volume than any other gateway system on the planet. Given the seemingly increasing frequency of DDOS attacks, if a merchant wants to secure themselves against a "single point of failure" from one gateway - it is easy to setup a 2nd backup gateway system that could be used in the event of the primary gateway being DDOS'd. That is a simple solution to this problem that can be easily implemented by most merchant processors, for a merchant that does enough volume to warrant the small additional gateway fee of a 2nd gateway.
Posted by CyberSEAL, 09-17-2004, 10:31 AM
Online extortionists, it's been in the news recently...
Posted by lloyd_miller, 09-17-2004, 10:32 AM
Yeah, but there is no reason to think LinkPoint won't have the same problem when DDos attacked. Lloyd Miller
Posted by CyberSEAL, 09-17-2004, 10:33 AM
Ummm, I don't know about that. I noticed that this started around 3pm yesterday. I doubt seriously that they had people working on this overnight. My past experience at CyberCash and Verisign tells me that there comes a certain point where their worthless engineers call it a night and agree to resume troubleshooting in the morning...
Posted by cdgcommerce, 09-17-2004, 10:45 AM
Lloyd, I'd agree with your assessment on that. I sure hope that this issue doesn't happen to Linkpoint but no gateway is really immune to a disruption caused by a DDOS attack. In fact, I sure hope that the folks doing this DDOS attack to AuthNet don't read this thread as they might consider it some kind of a "challenge" to disrupt Linkpoint! BTW - as a further update on this, to try to keep everyone informed, one of our staff spoke with Authorize.Net and they have narrowed the problem down further. It is now possible for certain merchants to log in and utilize the system but there are some restrictions still in place for certain IP ranges which affect various cross sections of merchants on that gateway.
Posted by CyberSEAL, 09-17-2004, 10:53 AM
I'm aware that no one is "immune" to a DDOS. However, it's been my experience in the past that companies affected by them were able to bring the issue under control with a few hours. When Ev1 servers gets hit, they usually have the issue resolved within an hour or two I've noticed. Why isn't Authorizenet identifying and blocking the networks the attack is coming from?
Posted by cdgcommerce, 09-17-2004, 11:10 AM
Well - they are identifying and blocking. In fact, merchants are now able to access Authorize.Net and use it just fine as long as they are not on one of the blocked network ranges. For instance, some of the folks on our support team who work on the West Coast are able to log in to Authorize.Net and use it just fine now. The same is true for a decent cross section of our merchants as well. But all that being said, I agree with you 100% that this process seemingly took (and is still taking) an abnormally long amount of time to fully resolve. However, we all don't know the details, the size of the attack, etc. I will be sure to post whatever we find out as the situation continues to develop.
Posted by CyberSEAL, 09-17-2004, 11:37 AM
I can access their systems again, and my IP range was one of the ones they were blocking. Their online interface seems faster than I'm used to as well. I guess we can now expect them to crash this time since everyone who has been waiting like we have will login at once to process transactions. 20 Hour Outage...Nice
Posted by fraudgate, 09-17-2004, 11:42 AM
The outage ended at about 6pm EST yesterday for us. I guess it depends on the different IP ranges.
Posted by cdgcommerce, 09-17-2004, 11:43 AM
I can access it as well and my IP was one on of the affected ranges. It appears that everything is back to normal now. BTW - I am quite certain Authorize.Net can handle the volume of transactions that will be going through. But I will still be talking to one of the managers over there to find out why in the world it took them this long to resolve the issue.
Posted by Host Ultra, 09-17-2004, 12:23 PM
for me its back up but it maybe a good idea to try some of these alternate urls: for some time during the downtime i found that this url was working but the secure.authorize.net was not. https://www.authorize.net/gateway/transact.dll
Posted by lloyd_miller, 09-17-2004, 01:33 PM
I just ran a number of back transactions thru authorize.net; so, finally! They got up and running again! Well over 24 hours. . . Lloyd
Posted by narx, 09-18-2004, 12:59 AM
While this is all over and things are back to normal with Authorize.net, I think it's worth explaining the situation a little better to you all just for informative purposes. To answer your question, it's because EV1 has really, really fat pipes to the Internet and many, many IP addresses. They're not a small business -- they are a gargantuan ISP. When one of their customers is hit with a DDoS attack (usually to a select few IPs), it is not uncommon for them to simply null route (ie. disconnect) the customer's IP address until the attack dies down. Sometimes they do take reasonably small scale attacks without null routing you (and they'll notify you if that happens via a ticket) thanks to their huge connections to the Internet. However, Authorizenet isn't some massive ISP. They don't focus on having enormous amounts of costly bandwidth or IP addresses. They're a payment gateway. Trying to draw a comparison between EV1 and Authorizenet is silly. And "identifying and blocking" the originating networks? That's a lot easier said than done. Modern DDoS attacks don't simply use the zombie machine's real IP address. They spoof completely different ones. If it was as easy as blocking specific networks, we wouldn't have DDoS problems at all -- major ISPs would permanently blacklist those networks and DDoS attacks would be a thing of the past. As for those of you complaining about losing X number of dollars because of this, keep in mind Authorize.net probably lost a lot more than you in fees, existing customers, and (from reading this thread) potential customers. That adds up to a lot of money. It's not like they were sitting around saying "Welp, looks like we're getting a DDoS attack. Pass me another beer, Bill." -- they were probably sweating bullets and working frantically to find a solution, knowing every passing second meant lost money. And beleive me, from personal experience good DDoS solutions are very expensive and pretty hard to find. Think companies like RackSpace will save you? No, they won't -- the new kinds of large scale attacks you see coming from extortionists can still get through and leave no other option to Rackspace but to null route you. In short, cut these guys a little slack. It's not like they asked to be attacked and it's not like the solutions are cheap or easy to come by, regardless of what ISPs trying to market DDoS prevention systems say to you. We lost a decent bit of money from their downtime, but from being in their position a while back I can't really get angry.
Posted by KNL-BSW, 09-18-2004, 04:06 AM
Well, after reading the posts and searching I don't see one over this right now. All the posts say this is cleared up. I just had my batch fail, I have two different networks (GNAX & CPC) that can't connect along with my network here. If this should be in outages, mods please move it. But they are really down. Can people verify by going to https://secure.authorize.net? It appears to be completely down, but Authorize.net is up and says this is supposedly fixed.
Posted by narx, 09-18-2004, 04:07 AM
Looks down to me as well. Anyone else? Edit: Just had a transaction go through (4:09am EST), but I still can't get to the administrative interface.
Posted by KNL-BSW, 09-18-2004, 04:14 AM
Just verified from two more networks. You would think a company that large would invest in heavy DDOS protection including a backup plan in case DDOS protection failed. I can't even manually run a batch. Just flat hangs.
Posted by trevyn, 09-18-2004, 05:10 AM
Yup. It was up for a while, but went down for me again at around midnight PST. (3 diverse networks) I just got a few transactions through now (~ 2am PST), but it's far from fixed.
Posted by ServerPlace4NET, 09-18-2004, 10:57 AM
we are having the same problem, can't process any bills because of this issue.
Posted by CDGJerry, 09-18-2004, 11:44 AM
The bad thing about DDOS attacks is that even if you have another server with a different route/connection People will know and it will get attacked at the same time more often than note. DDOS attacks are not fun. I have been in witness to a machine that was getting hit. Many ips were being blocked right off the bat but the poor engineer was working franticly to slow the attack as much as possible. I know this is no consolation when you can't run your transactions like you need.
Posted by Cash&Sol, 09-18-2004, 12:29 PM
Seems to be authorize's theme this past week.
Posted by cdgcommerce, 09-18-2004, 01:52 PM
I am able to access it without any problem. Are you all still having any issues accessing it?
Posted by enrico, 09-18-2004, 06:29 PM
I can lynx to it but my billing software times out????
Posted by trevyn, 09-18-2004, 06:31 PM
All of my transactions since about 3 am PST have been processed fine.
Posted by KNL-BSW, 09-18-2004, 08:37 PM
They are up again. Have been since I got up around noon MST. (birthday tomorrow so I'm sleeping in on this weekend. ). I'm half tempted to drop it in Alertra because when they are down we can't process any new CC Orders and we can't process recurring billing.
Posted by fraudgate, 09-19-2004, 12:11 AM
Hopefully they have the attacks under control now. It has been unfortunate that we were unable to process orders during their downtime periods over the last couple days. Luckily these types of things very rarely happen with Authorize.
Posted by ICALIV, 09-19-2004, 11:16 AM
It's been down since midnight and is still down...
Posted by trevyn, 09-19-2004, 01:55 PM
... Ok, I'm the patient, understanding type. Really. But this is getting out of hand. They need to start whitelisting IPs sending valid transactions...or something. My status: fine until 6 am PST, down 6 am - 9am, very erratic processing 9 am - now [11 am]
Posted by Host Ultra, 09-19-2004, 03:41 PM
I have discovered an alternate IP address for authorize.net gateway that works even through the DDOS. its 1 digit away from the usual ip In your /etc/hosts file put 64.94.118.62 secure.authorize.net Various other IPs in the 64.94.118.6x - 64.94.118.7x are also mirrors to the gateway Last edited by Host Ultra; 09-19-2004 at 03:51 PM.
Posted by Zach, 09-19-2004, 03:54 PM
What is going on , this is the third time this week I have tried to process billing and it just times out. We as an industry pay alot of money to authorize.net, time for them to find a solution to their issues. Anyone getting 403 errors when trying to view their website? (The support services page?)
Posted by Vortech, 09-19-2004, 04:03 PM
The 64.94.118.62 does not seem to work ether, is that part of the network getting DDOSed now as well. Grrrr..
Posted by Marty, 09-20-2004, 07:48 AM
Anybody still having problems this morning?
Posted by trevyn, 09-20-2004, 07:50 AM
Yeah, though it's back up for me at this particular moment. See other thread: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...2&goto=newpost
Posted by Arsalan, 09-20-2004, 08:38 AM
it still seems to be down
Posted by TopHostSupport, 09-20-2004, 09:01 AM
Was down all day yesterday for me and is still down
Posted by Arsalan, 09-20-2004, 09:31 AM
right now it is sort of up but very slow..
Posted by Laxzilla, 09-20-2004, 02:31 PM
Just wanted to say thanks for the info on what a DDoS attack is. Both of my company's sites use ANet, and it's good to know we're not the only ones affected by this. At the moment ANet is still down for us, though I heard we did get through to the interface briefly earlier this morning. *sigh*
Posted by joestern, 09-20-2004, 02:58 PM
Anyone have any idea how many customers they have? My guess is 10,000 or so.
Posted by Arsalan, 09-20-2004, 04:06 PM
i would guess they have at least 100,000 + customers.
Posted by trevyn, 09-20-2004, 04:35 PM
Yes, definitely over 100k.
Posted by tikmok, 09-22-2004, 02:34 PM
http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/aut092204.cfm http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...w=wn_tophead_7
Posted by TopHostSupport, 09-22-2004, 02:41 PM
I'm not losing that much but it's hurting me. I wonder why they don't have a mirror for merchants in this type of situation.
Posted by Host Ultra, 09-22-2004, 03:26 PM
What i did was modify my (custom written) billing software so that it tests if the gateway is up before submitting transaction. If the gateway is down a background process is launched which waits until the gateway is up and then processes the sale and emails the customer. This way you loose nothing
Posted by tikmok, 09-22-2004, 03:40 PM
My company has a backup gateway (Intellipay), which we use in this kind of situation. We are not pain-fee, though, some of our customers who have their own merchant accounts using Authorize.net are heavily affected.
Posted by szuchy, 09-22-2004, 04:27 PM
Good thinking - I would agree that if this is affecting you, you should either switch to a new gateway ASAP (good), or use two in conjunction so that you will always have a backup (better). The fee for a second gateway pales in comparison to the business you could lose if your sole gateway goes down.
Posted by tikmok, 09-24-2004, 06:37 PM
Hello, Does anybody still have problems with Authorize.net? According to them, the DDOS problem has been resolved, but we are still having connectivity problem to secure.authorize.net. Thanks.
Posted by trevyn, 09-24-2004, 06:45 PM
Yeah, it's ongoing. My last problem transaction was 9/24 ~10am PST
Posted by tikmok, 09-24-2004, 07:22 PM
Thanks, trevyn. Are you having lots of problems, or just an intermittent problem here and there?
Posted by trevyn, 09-24-2004, 08:00 PM
It seems to come in phases, will work fine for a while and then barely work at all for a while. The overnight was particularly bad, only got a handful of transactions through from 10pm-8am. Also just got the "we fixed it completely!" email. Still no problems since 10am, we shall see.