AT&T DNS Hit By Significant DDoS Impacting Unspecified Number of Users AT&T's DNS systems were hit with a fairly massive DDoS attack on Wednesday, which is still crippling service for a significant number of users today. According to IDG News, the attack only impacted business customers, though we've heard some complaints from residential users as well. "Due to a distributed denial of service attack attempting to flood our Domain Name System servers in two locations, some AT&T business customers are experiencing intermittent disruptions in service," says AT&T. "Restoration efforts are underway and we apologize for any inconvenience to our customers." Update: AT&T tells us the DNS issues have been resolved. : AT&T tells us the DNS issues have been resolved.







News Jump Stark New Reality In The Telco Business: Dumb Pipes No Longer Cut It; AT&T Unveils Mix and Match Plans; + more news AT&T Extends Overage Charge Waiver; Verizon And T-Mobile Each Insist Their 5G Strategy Is The Right One; + more news War Of Words Heats Up: T-Mobile Fires Back At Verizon, AT&T; Amazon Intros Gaming Service To Take On Stadia; + more news Starlink's Network Faces Huge Limitations; AT&T Whines T-Mobile Merger Put Too Much Spectrum In One Place; + more news WISPs Get CBRS Range As Great As Six Miles At 100 Mbps Speeds; Windstream Officially Exits Bankruptcy; + more news Charter Relaunches Free 60-day Internet And Wi-Fi Offer; NCTA: FCC Should Stick With 25/3 Speed Threshold; + more news Comcast Shuts Off Internet for Subs Who Were Sold Service Illegally; AT&T, Verizon Team To Stop T-Mobile 5G; + more news California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news Europe's Top Court: Net Neutrality Rules Bar Zero Rating; ViacomCBS To Rebrand CBS All Access As Paramount+; + more news ---------------------- this week last week most discussed view:

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tshirt

Premium Member

join:2004-07-11

Snohomish, WA tshirt Premium Member DNSSEC? "we don't need no stinkin' DNSSEC ! " Do we?

David

Premium Member

join:2002-05-30

Granite City, IL David Premium Member Re: DNSSEC? "we don't need no stinkin' DNSSEC ! " DNSSec prevents the spoofing of DNS response packets, it does not prevent someone from asking the DNS over and over 'hey, what is this IP?"



Sorry charlie, not exactly that simple.

tshirt

Premium Member

join:2004-07-11

Snohomish, WA tshirt Premium Member Re: DNSSEC? "we don't need no stinkin' DNSSEC ! " The point being AT&T has long been lazy in preemptive stratagies for DNS and other potential security and usabilty issues that others seem to largely avoid.

The one they most recently pooh poohed as unnessesary was DNSSEC.

You have to admit the (potential for a) problem existing, BEFORE you can plan to avoid it, or at least become resilent to it.

battleop

join:2005-09-28

00000 battleop to tshirt

Member to tshirt

What's that got to do with a denial of service?



DNS understanding: FAIL ISurfTooMuch

join:2007-04-23

Tuscaloosa, AL ISurfTooMuch Member Alternative DNS servers Google Public DNS

Primary: 8.8.8.8

Secondary: 8.8.4.4



Of course, if you can get here and read this, you probably don't need this info.

sk1939

Premium Member

join:2010-10-23

Frederick, MD sk1939 Premium Member Re: Alternative DNS servers DSLReports: 209.123.109.175

David

Premium Member

join:2002-05-30

Granite City, IL David Premium Member slight problem From what I understand the authoritative servers are under attack, if that's the case no one is going to get an answer. Even the great google won't get one.

TamaraB

Question The Current Paradigm

Premium Member

join:2000-11-08

Da Bronx Ubiquiti NSM5

Synology RT2600ac

Apple AirPort Extreme (2013)

TamaraB Premium Member Re: slight problem said by David: From what I understand the authoritative servers are under attack, if that's the case no one is going to get an answer. Even the great google won't get one.

Only addresses under the AT&T domain are controlled by those servers. AT&T customers needing to resolve addresses outside of AT&T can use any alternate public DNS servers. ISurfTooMuch

join:2007-04-23

Tuscaloosa, AL ISurfTooMuch to David

Member to David

If you're talking about the DNS servers that are authoritative for AT&T-hosted domains, then no, no one will be able to resolve them, no matter what servers they use or what network they're on. But I get the impression that this is referring to the DNS servers that AT&T customers use by default. If it's those that are under attack, then using alternative servers will get around that.



Now if you mean that it's the root servers that are under attack, well, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. DNSguy

join:2006-04-09

Saint Charles, MO DNSguy Member Re: slight problem It was not referring to the DNS resolvers our customers use. You were correct in your first statement - only the servers that are authoritative for AT&T hosted domains were under attack. Using alternate servers would not help at all, as those servers would be unable to get replies.

AggieDan

@xo.net AggieDan Anon Re: slight problem That's definitely the case. Our company was crippled due to this attack. We were already in the process of migrating from AT&T's servers to another provider so we sped up that transition. Then we had to wait for the changes to propagate.



It has not been a fun 24 hours. georgeglass5

join:2010-06-07

New York, NY georgeglass5 Member HA HA ! Very Mature. & He He !!!Very Mature.

CCNnorthcali

join:2004-03-07

San Francisco, CA CCNnorthcali Member Thanks AT&T Isn't it great that many (all?) of the AT&T's U-Verse routers don't allow you to change the assigned DNS servers? You have to either do it per-machine, or buy a secondary router. cornelius785

join:2006-10-26

Worcester, MA cornelius785 Member Re: Thanks AT&T That's essentially what i do. i've got a linux server that runs a local DNS server and the DHCP server hands out the local machine's IP as the DNS server IP. mmay149q

Premium Member

join:2009-03-05

Dallas, TX mmay149q to CCNnorthcali

Premium Member to CCNnorthcali

said by CCNnorthcali: Isn't it great that many (all?) of the AT&T's U-Verse routers don't allow you to change the assigned DNS servers? You have to either do it per-machine, or buy a secondary router.

It was not referring to the DNS resolvers our customers use. You were correct in your first statement - only the servers that are authoritative for AT&T hosted domains were under attack. Using alternate servers would not help at all, as those servers would be unable to get replies.



l2r, just sayin......



Matt l2r, just sayin......Matt

David

Premium Member

join:2002-05-30

Granite City, IL David to CCNnorthcali

Premium Member to CCNnorthcali

DNSguy pretty much summed it up it wasn't a customer (Uverse, dsl) dns problem. I suppose you can change your DNS, if you have time to waste. chgo_man99

join:2010-01-01

San Jose, CA chgo_man99 Member I have u-verse but so far no impact

David

Premium Member

join:2002-05-30

Granite City, IL 215.3 11.9

David Premium Member Re: I have u-verse said by chgo_man99: but so far no impact

you shouldn't see any either. Had you seen it, DNSguy would have been all over that like stink on s__t!

Beans

@108.16.77.x Beans Anon Re: I have u-verse said by David: said by chgo_man99: but so far no impact



you shouldn't see any either. Had you seen it, DNSguy would have been all over that like stAnk on s__t! Fixed

David

Premium Member

join:2002-05-30

Granite City, IL David Premium Member Re: I have u-verse LOL! +2 That was funny! corinthos

join:2007-10-09 corinthos Member Explains why my dad's Mac wasn't working Explains why my dad's Mac wasn't working. I went over there thinking it was user error then I downloaded chrome and has that same issue and chrome gave me the dns error. Once I switched it then everything worked fine.

He called ATT around 8 am cst that morning and they had him try a website and told him everything worked fine I went over there about 11 and fixed it.

InTheKnow

@comcast.net InTheKnow Anon Well, wasn't a happy day for some banks Seems this also affected many credit unions as it took down some ATM's and Online Banking. Too bad hey didn't have a "secondary" DNS server setup. Duh.

Mr Anon

@k12.il.us Mr Anon Anon Phew I missed out on all the phone, my MIS line and my Uverse line at home are not having any issues.

Compupaq

@agatesoftware.com Compupaq Anon Good thing I don't use AT&T's DNS I've been using opendns pretty much since I got uverse. When I last used att's dns over two years ago, I found it to be extremely slow despite the bandwidth I had available. I switched to opendns and it's been smooth sailing ever since. your comment..

