Downtime events like the Sept 27, 2012, PNC Financial website outage make for compelling headlines, banker headaches, and bank website user annoyances. (To quickly check on your bank’s website uptime status and speed click here). But, is this downtime more than that? Is it another locus-of-control (digital access to money) in the modern age that is spinning out-of-control into an encroaching cyber black hole of economic chaos? Well no, but… downtime and slow downs do have an impact. In fact, the cumulative effect of IT downtime on financial institutions is estimated by the Coleman Parkes Research firm in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per institution per year. The PNC outage, and attendant Wells Fargo outage and US Bank outage events are reportedly due denial of service (DOS) cyber attacks by a group called the Qassam Cyber Fighters. Whatever the goal of this group, to-date the impact is website users are unable to interact with their bank accounts. (Denial of service (DDoS) cyber attacks on banks will likely continue in the future. See our followup post, Bank Cyber Attacks: Responding to future DDoS attacks and website outages.)
Update on U.S. Bancorp, PNC, Wells Fargo Outage: Reported Cyber Attack
Dotcom-Monitor is tracking the current Wells Fargo Bank outage as well as a reported US Bank outage and PNC outage. For an immediate update on the bank outage status run our free instant test. The issue is a reported denial-of-service attack, however at this time Dotcom-Monitor cannot confirm that assessment as reported by news outlets. As of 5:11 pm CST the Wells Fargo system appears to be stabilizing, but some users may experience longer than usual connection and load times. Note, for example, this 24 -second connection time from our Minnesota location at 5:12 pm CST:
Wells Fargo Outage Report
At this time, additional banks outages reported by Fox News as associated with the reported denial-of-service attack include US Bank and PNC Financial. As of 5:25 pm CST news outlets have not reported that PNC had independently confirmed that the PNC downtime was associated with the group claiming responsibility, the Mrt. Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters. (See how banks can respond to downtime in our followup piece: PNC Financial: After the Website Outage, next steps.)
The GoDaddy DNS outage and Paternity Test: Who’s your GoDaddy?
@GoDaddy Twitter Status Alert on 9/10/12 in regards to GoDaddy DNS Outage Issues
The GoDaddy DNS Outage and Paternity Test: Who’s your GoDaddy?
Its another episode of the Maury Povich Paternity Test on DNS Outage TV yesterday. Having just written about a major AT&T DNS outage on Aug. 15, here we are again on Sept 10, 2012 witnessing the GoDaddy DNS outage. Millions of website and email users DNS look-up process is playing out like a Maury Povich TV episode of paternity testing gone wrong. First time visitors to a GoDaddy website type the GoDaddy URL into their browser and the answer from the DNS comes back “This aint your GoDaddy.” Or something like that.
Dealing with DNS outage Denial
Moreover, last month the DNS outage was with AT&T DNS. So, whats a website owner to do now that another “big daddy” DNS provider is exposed (again) as not completely reliable? One option is to switch to another DNS providers and gamble that “this” DNS provider is somehow immune to the vagaries of the Internet. Or, another option is to stop deluding yourself, grow up and do something realistic about the reality that DNS providers – like everything else on the Internet – are not perfect and never will be. Ladies and gentlemen, our completely not bold prediction is – a major DNS outage will happen again soon.
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