NationBuilder began experiencing a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Monday, resulting in a full service outage from 1:07pm to 5:35pm PT, and intermittent outages through Tuesday morning. These attacks did not compromise any of your data or financial information.
We responded immediately to get all sites back online, and have been implementing a variety of countermeasures as fast as we can to ensure full service availability.
A DDoS attack is when a large number of computers (a “botnet”) flood the network. This clogged the pipes that lead to our servers, preventing access to NationBuilder. Technically, our servers were fine during the attacks, people just couldn’t reach them.
As we stated yesterday, we are reasonably certain one of our customers was targeted for their political beliefs and the attacks were an attempt to disrupt upcoming elections.
NationBuilder exists to provide the infrastructure for organizing – and that infrastructure must withstand any attacks.
And this week, we failed. We are deeply sorry.
The only good news to come of this is that we are dramatically stronger than we were before, both in our technical infrastructure and in our effectiveness as a team. We cannot promise this will never happen again, but we can promise that we will continue to invest heavily in our infrastructure to withstand any and all attacks.
We know we can’t make up for something that has immeasurable impact. However, we will be issuing you a credit equivalent to one week of service on your next bill because it is the right thing to do.
Thanks for all of the words of support and encouragement during this time. As always, our organizers are here to help. If you have additional questions, call us at 213-394-4623 or email [email protected].
