People flocked to Google Wednesday evening to figure out what was happening with the UltraDNS service, which suffered a DDoS attack at the height of the last-minute shopping season.
(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)An attack directed at the DNS provider for some of the Internet's larger e-commerce companies--including Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Expedia--took several Internet shopping sites offline Wednesday evening, two days before Christmas.
Neustar, the company that provides DNS services under the UltraDNS brand name, confirmed an attack took place Wednesday afternoon, taking out sites or rendering them extremely sluggish for about an hour. A representative who answered the customer support line said the attacks were directed against Neustar facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose, Calif., and Allen Goldberg, vice president of corporate communications for Neustar, confirmed that at about 4:45 p.m. PST, "our alarms went off."
Goldberg said the company received a disproportionately high number of queries coming into the system, and analyzed it as an attack. Neustar deployed "a mitigation response" within minutes of the attack, he said, and brought matters under control within an hour. The response limited the problems to Northern California, he said.
In addition to the high-profile sites, dozens of smaller sites that rely upon Amazon for Web-hosting services were also taken down by the attack. Amazon's S3 and EC2 services were affected by the problems, according to Jeff Barr, Amazon's lead Web Evangelist, who retweeted a report to that effect without clarification and confirmed it in later tweets.
For a brief period Wednesday evening, "ultradns" was the top search term on Google, likely as frantic technicians at Web sites attempted to figure out what was going on with their sites.
Web sites need DNS providers to translate the character-based URLs that people can remember to the IP addresses that Web sites actually use to list themselves on the Internet. When a DNS provider is overwhelmed with malicious requests for IP addresses, the system can overload and prevent legitimate users from reaching their destinations.
Amazon's Web Services Health Dashboard declared an all-clear around 6:40 p.m. PST, saying that DNS resolution had returned to normal. Amazon and several other big sites seemed to recover around 5:40 p.m., but some other sites continued to report problems until around 6 p.m.
Needless to say, the timing of such an outage could not have been much worse, as holiday procrastinators rushed to make sure they could get one-day shipping for gifts to be delivered before Christmas Day on Friday.
Wolf Austad, a CNET reader, wrote in around 5:00 p.m. PST Wednesday to report that a last-minute gift purchase for his wife from Amazon.com had gone awry. He later reported that his transaction was stored in Amazon.com's history once he was able to get back into the site. However, "now I need to explain to my wife why she is getting her gift on the 26th," he wrote in an e-mail.
UltraDNS suffered a similar attack earlier this year, which took out Amazon, Salesforce.com, and other sites. Goldberg described Wednesday's attack as smaller than that one, in that it affected fewer customers.
However, Amazon is no small customer. Goldberg declined to comment on specific customers affected by the outage, and said Neustar had not yet determined the source of the attack.
One expert thought the attack might have been more widespread.
"This was wider than just UltraDNS," said Bill Woodcock, research director at Packet Clearing House, which operates domain name servers and supports Internet exchange points around the globe.
"It's difficult to tell at this point how much is a DDoS attack and how much is collateral damage from the attack that is being felt in other ways," like a domino effect, he said. "There were routing problems at some major European exchanges at the same time that caused major Internet service providers' routers to encounter a higher load and pass fewer packets."
CNET's Elinor Mills contributed to this report.
Editor's note: This post was continuously updated as this story developed. For a more complete account of what happened, see our followup story here.
Update: A customer support representative for NeuStar, the company that provides the UltraDNS service, confirms the outage was the result of a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. More details below.
Procrastinators, beware: Amazon.com and a host of Internet shopping sites are having trouble Wednesday evening.
Two days before Christmas is likely not the best time for Amazon to go down, but at some point around 5 p.m. PST Wednesday evening, Amazon was loading extremely slowly. One CNET reader wrote in to say his pending transaction failed just as he attempted to complete it, and the site was extremely sluggish as the sun set on the West Coast Wednesday.
Twitter users of Amazon's S3 service for Web hosting reported outages as well, and customers of Salesforce.com and Walmart.com were also reporting problems on Twitter.
We'll update as we learn more. If you can't (or can) access Amazon from your location, please let us know in the comments.
Updated 5:35 p.m. PST: It appears the problem may be larger than Amazon. Reports began to immediately circulate that UltraDNS, the DNS provider for several West Coast Internet companies, was having serious problems. In addition to Amazon, Salesforce.com, and Walmart.com, problems were also reported with Expedia.com.
Rusty Hodge, general manager and program director at Internet radio station SomaFM, tweeted that UltraDNS simply went down, taking down customers of Amazon's S3 and EC2 services as well as Amazon.com itself. Jeff Barr, lead Web services evangelist at Amazon.com, retweeted Hodge's statement without comment.
In perhaps a related problem, the Internet Health Report shows severe latency and packet loss on a connection between Qwest and Savvis.
Updated 5:45 p.m. PST: UltraDNS representatives could not be reached for comment. Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and Salesforce.com all seemed to come back to life around 5:40 p.m. PST, but some problems were still being reported.
Amazon representatives did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Updated 5:53 p.m. PST: Amazon's AWS Service Health Dashboard reports "DNS resolution errors" affecting Amazon Simple Storage Service customers for Northern California and U.S. Standard.
Updated 6:10 p.m. PST: A customer support representative for Neustar, the company that provides the UltraDNS service to several e-commerce sites, confirmed that its network was hit by a DDOS attack targeting their California network in Palo Alto and San Jose.
As of 6:15 p.m. PST, things seemed back to normal. The Internet Health Report also showed an improvement on the Qwest-Savvis line noted earlier, and Amazon's Web Services dashboard confirmed that while there were problems resolving DNS requests, "the service is successfully responding to requests."
eBay Motors founder Simon Rothman announced on Monday that he has officially launched a new e-commerce site, Glyde.
According to the press release, Glyde's goal "is to democratize e-commerce." The site was born out of Rothman's desire to make it easier for Web users to buy and sell products online.
But Glyde throws in a twist. The site's marketplace is designed for Web users to sell used goods. They can sell books, CDs, DVDs, and video games.
"The average American household has $3,000 worth of unwanted media collecting dust," Rothman said in a statement. "We built a service that makes buying and selling a used DVD as simple as trading a share of Disney stock. It's the NASDAQ for physical goods."
It's an interesting take on what Glyde is all about. But after using the site for awhile, I would agree that it does make it extremely easy to buy and sell goods.
Glyde lets you search for DVDs, CDs, Games, or books.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Glyde's design is extremely simple. If you decide you want to buy some products, you can flip through the listing of available inventory, pick what you want, and learn more about it by clicking on it without much trouble. Unlike sites like Amazon or eBay, which deliver you to a product's individual page listing, Glyde displays the listing over the search results. When you're done looking at it, simply click the "X" at the top right of the panel and you'll be returned to your spot in the results.
Placed prominently on all product pages is a "Buy Now" button. Users have the option of buying a used copy of the product from a seller or a new copy.
Glyde shows off a product listing.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Glyde's buying process isn't all that unique. It's standard fare. And even though it offers discounted pricing, I just don't think it competes well against Amazon's Marketplace or eBay. Those sites have far more products, competitive pricing, and simpler checkout processes. Unless Glyde can improve upon that, it might have a problem.
But it's Glyde's selling side that will probably appeal most to users. The site makes it incredibly simple to sell products. Users need only to list the product, set a sales price, and wait for someone to buy. Once they do, Glyde sends them a prestamped, preaddressed mailer. Sellers need to insert the item they're selling into the mailer and place it in their mailbox. Once the buyer receives the product, the funds are deposited into the seller's account, less the cost of the mailer and Glyde's fee, which is 10 percent of the sales price.
Even better, those selling products on Glyde can opt for the proceeds to go to the charity of their choice. It's a nice option.
Glyde provides a simple, efficient e-commerce solution. But by taking on giants eBay and Amazon in the used-goods market, it will be difficult for the company to stay relevant and capture significant market share.
Amazon Associates is the partner program the company uses as part of its affiliate advertising programs, allowing customers to make money advertising Amazon products.
Associates can now simply click a link in the toolbar to send a link (replete with sales-y text) to Twitter as part of their shopping and selling experience. Amazon gets a sale, Twitter gets traffic, and the associate gets revenue share. What could possibly go wrong?
Linking to Amazon or other online retailers is obviously nothing new, though Amazon has been particularly successful in using its link networks for both sales and to garner higher Google rankings for organic advertising.
This new program does introduce an issue related to link fraud, where spammers and scammers leverage URL-shortening services for spam links. Currently there is no way to verify that the link you click actually goes to Amazon. It's a bit surprising that it decided to use an URL-shortener that it doesn't own, though I suppose the network effect of the URLs helps perpetuate the life of the links.
There is also a risk of nondisclosure wherein in Twitter users attempt to push products that offer some kind of gain to them that they don't clearly state to you. While I understand the argument for disclosure on blogs and media in general, Twitter remains a playground for people to post whatever they want. I highly doubt all the celebrities with accounts would bother wasting their precious time if they weren't posting for their own gain.
Interestingly, there is no mention of whether Twitter is an Amazon Associate, suggesting that Twitter won't see any of the revenue share. I'd like to think that they cut a deal that gives them a piece of the pie, but to date we haven't seen Twitter monetize itself too effectively.
Twitter is quickly becoming the flash news vehicle for everything from news alerts to product placement. And based on a very quick review of my Bitly account, Twitter users just love to click on links. But, I still have to wonder if Twitter will ever get beyond its current role as a marketing tool?
PayPal is preparing to launch a new payment system that simplifies the process of buying products from within an online application, The Wall Street Journal is reporting.
According to the report, the new service will be called PayPal X. It will allow users to sign in to their PayPal accounts and purchase products from within a respective application.
The service, which has reportedly been in limited testing, is eBay's best hope for capitalizing on the burgeoning in-app payment market, which has witnessed Facebook emerge as one of PayPal's strongest competitors.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook's in-app currency, Facebook Credits, is now being considered by many developers that are lured by the social network's size and reach.
Sebastien de Halleux, chief operating officer of social-gaming company Playfish, told the Journal that his company is trying out Facebook Credits to possibly replace PayPal. He told the Journal that Facebook's service "can create a lot of value by reducing friction and allowing many more people to spend money." It also helps that Facebook's system, unlike PayPal, is built into the social network.
With PayPal X, it seems the online-payment company is trying to stay relevant in a market that is becoming increasingly complex (and crowded). It should be interesting to see if PayPal X can help PayPal stay relevant--and compete with Facebook.
Expanding its cloud-computing storage services to a higher level, Amazon.com unveiled a new option called Amazon RDS for companies that want to store information in a database on the other side of the Internet.
The suite of Amazon Web Services (AWS) already included a database option called SimpleDB, a basic database with its own interface standard for storing data and retrieving it. The Amazon Relational Database Service, in contrast, uses a more standard database interface, embodied in this case in an online implementation of the open-source MySQL software, the company said Monday.
"With Amazon RDS, you get full native access to a MySQL database," specifically, version 5.1 of the Sun Microsystems technology, the company said on its Amazon RDS site. "This means Amazon RDS works with your existing tools, applications, and drivers. You can port an existing database to Amazon RDS without changing a line of code--just point your tools or applications at your Amazon RDS DB instance, and you are ready to go."
Amazon raised minimized hassle and increased flexibility as reasons to use the service, which is currently in beta testing.
"Every hour that you don't spend fiddling with hardware, tracing cables, installing operating systems, or managing databases is an hour that you can spend on the unique and value-added aspects of your application," Jeff Barr, the company's Web services evangelist, said in a blog post. "I should point out that RDS enables a lot of really enticing development and test scenarios. You can set up a separate database instance for each developer on a project without making a big investment in hardware."
With its years-long effort, the Net retailer has built Amazon Web Services into a formidable presence in the information technology world. Competitors include Google App Engine, a computing foundation that can run Java or Python programs on Google's own BigTable database technology, and Microsoft's Azure, which is set to offer access to Windows servers in the cloud when it formally launches in November.
One potentially interesting rival is Oracle, already a giant in the database market and, if it can overcome European regulatory concerns, the future owner of MySQL assets. Because MySQL is open-source software, though, anyone may use and modify it, even without its copyright holders' permission.
The biggest competitor to this model is doing things the old way, with companies running their own computing infrastructure. Cloud computing poses security and trust issues for many companies considering whether to put their data and business applications on somebody else's computer systems. But researchers such as Gartner, an influential but not radical analyst firm, now recommend that companies look seriously at cloud computing.
Amazon is working on greater robustness for Amazon RDS. It offers automated backup, and it later plans to offer a "high-availability" option at no extra charge, with which customers can create a separate instance of a database in a different geographic region.
As with all services on AWS, Amazon RDS is priced on an as-used basis--with per-hour charges according to the server memory requirements of the database: 11 cents per hour for a small database of 1.7GB of RAM; 44 cents for large, or 7.5GB; 88 cents for extra-large, or 15GB; $1.55 for double extra-large, or 34GB; and $3.10 for quadruple extra-large, or 68GB. There also are charges for the size of data stored, the number of input-output requests, the amount of data written to the database, and the amount of data read from the database.
This week we are covering the dangers of cloud computing. Get it? With the major loss of consumer data for the Sidekick smartphone users--the Sidekick is made by Danger, a Microsoft company--the whole idea of "cloud" safety has been brought front and center for consumers.
Businesses, likewise, are wondering if they are exposed to similar risks when they put their apps and data in the cloud.
Can we trust the cloud?
Our guests to discuss this topic are CNET senior writer Stephen Shankland and Christofer Hoff, author of the Rational Survivability blog, which is about this very topic. Hoff is director of cloud and emerging solutions at Cisco System and thus has a vested interest in keeping the cloud safe and profitable.
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Reporters' Roundtable #7: The dangers of the cloud ... Read more
Amazon already has a free Kindle iPhone app. And soon it will have a free Kindle app for Windows PCs.
While the new app won't be available for download until next month, Microsoft demonstrated it at the Windows 7 launch event in New York City on Thursday. Like the iPhone app, Kindle for PC turns your PC into another reading device that can be linked to a Kindle account (you don't have to own a Kindle to set up a Kindle account). You can then choose to send Kindle e-books and periodicals to your PC via a wired or wireless network connection. Also, you can read an e-book on your PC while at home (or elsewhere), then send that same e-book to your iPhone or Kindle and pick up reading where you left off.
"Customers have told us that they want access to a wider variety of content and an increasingly diverse set of form factors," said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of Windows Platform Strategy at Microsoft. "With the announcement of Kindle for PC, Amazon is making its massive selection of Kindle books available on the world's most widely used platform."
Both Amazon and Microsoft are quick to note that Kindle for PC takes advantage of capabilities in the new Windows 7 OS, including Windows Touch technology. Also, the app isn't compatible with Windows 7 machines only, but will also work with Windows XP and Windows Vista computers.
Here's a list of features:
- Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
- Access your entire library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon's servers for free
- Choose from over 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
- View notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX
- Zoom in and out of text with a pinch of the fingers (Windows 7 users only)
- Turn pages with a finger swipe (available in a future release for Windows 7 users)
And what about a Kindle app for Macs? Well, Drew Herdener, Amazon.com's Director of Communications, tells us, "We will be coming out with Kindle for Mac in the next few months." Herdener also confirms that Kindle for Blackberry will debut soon.
To receive an e-mail when Kindle for PC is available for download, sign-up at amazon.com/KindleforPC.
Comments?
Wal-Mart Stores has waged an online book pricing war against Amazon.com, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday morning.
Wal-Mart sent the first salvo over Amazon's bow on Thursday when the retail giant announced that it would sell ten highly anticipated books for $10 on Walmart.com. Wal-Mart said Stephen King's upcoming hardcover "Under the Dome" and Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" will be included in that grouping. Wal-Mart's prices include free shipping.
Not to be outdone, Amazon reduced prices to match Wal-Mart's pricing on all 10 titles. That was quickly followed by Wal-Mart's decision to reduce the prices on those books again to $9 late Thursday night. In response, Amazon reduced the prices of all ten titles to $9, as well. The company also reduced the books' Kindle pricing to $9. That's where the prices stand on both sites as of this writing.
Sarah Palin's book is going for $9 on Wal-Mart.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)"If there is going to be a 'Wal-Mart of the Web,' it is going to be Walmart.com," Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. "Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site."
As viable a goal as that may be for Wal-Mart, it could also cost the online-retail industry dearly. According to the Journal, Wal-Mart is already offering up to 200 best sellers for "50 percent of their list price." That's a figure that most retailers can't keep up with. And as the publication pointed out, it's a price point that could put smaller, less powerful organizations out of business.
"Retailers traditionally pay half the list price for a hardcover book," the Journal wrote in its report. "Assuming that's the case with Wal-Mart, its $10 sale price on 'Under the Dome' represents a 71 percent discount of the $35 cover price, which suggests the discounter will lose $7 to $7.50 on every copy it sells." Wal-Mart might be able to afford that, but other, smaller retailers might not.
But $10 might not be a figure that Wal-Mart picked out of the air. Quite the contrary, the retail giant might have chosen $10 because it's the same price Amazon is currently offering e-books for in its Kindle store. Wal-Mart is, so far, on the outside looking in at the e-book market and the sale of highly anticipated hardcovers for $10 might reflect that.
That said, the company told the Journal that its decision to drop the price of those major titles had nothing to do with the Kindle. Even so, Wal-Mart is a major retailer with loads of cash that it can easily put towards infiltrating a discount book market--electronic or otherwise. A loss on select titles might be worth it in the long run. It could stymie some of the Kindle's impressive growth. That might have been Wal-Mart's intention all along.
What do you think of this? Is Wal-Mart the hero for offering hardcover books at such discounted rates? Is Amazon wrong for matching its pricing? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments below.
Don Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
If you're a frequent Amazon shopper, you might be looking out for tools to help enhance the experience of buying products on the site. There are services on the Web to help you get more out of Amazon than simply picking up a few products from the company's pages.
Let's take a look.
Get your Amazon on
AmaDig If you're looking for a different way to search Amazon, AmaDig will provide it.
When you get to the site, you can pick which Amazon category you want to sift through. From there, the site lists images of different products offered in that category. When you click on a respective product, you can view its specs, pricing, and reviews. You can also view the listing on Amazon or add it to your shopping cart from the site. It's a neat tool, but beware that the interface is a little clunky.
AmaDig has a unique way of displaying items.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Amazon Mobile If you're ready to buy a product at the store, you might want to consider using the Amazon app on your iPhone before you plunk down the cash.
Amazon Mobile not only lets you search for products and pricing, you can also take a picture of a product and have the app search Amazon's database to get its pricing. You can add items to your cart and use Amazon's 1-click payment system to place an order. (Read our full review here).
Amazon Mobile in action.
(Credit: CBS Interactive)
