Having trouble accessing PayPal, NewYorkTimes.com, Twitter, Reddit, PlayStation Network (we know you were trying to play Skyrim today — don’t lie) or another major website or network today?
Apparently, hackers have been attacking one of the internet’s biggest hosts, Dyn, with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) assault.
And it appears as though the Zillow Group sites are among those who use Dyn servers to host their content.
This error message is currently appearing for both Zillow and Trulia.
An Inman reader on the Coast to Coast group also reported that the Arizona Association of Realtors eSign business tool, which is powered by GoPaperless, is being affected by the hack — no doubt other signature and productivity tools could be affected, too.
Dyn’s latest update about the attack was at about 12:45 p.m. PDT today. You can keep yourself posted about the host’s progress at that link.
What’s the point of a DDoS attack? Some reasons why hackers use them include:
- To express displeasure against specific targets
- To take down a competitors’ website
- As an extortion technique — “Pay the ransom or we’ll take out your website”
- To divert attention from another activity that the hacker might be doing — such as stealing data
It’s not clear what the purpose of a hack this size could be.
A screenshot of a global outage map taken 12:45 p.m. PDT 10/21/16
See an outage map of the problem. (Screenshot above taken at 12:45 p.m. PDT.)
Other websites that users have reported being affected by this attack include:
- ActBlue
- Ancestry.com
- Atom.io
- Basecamp
- BBC
- Big Cartel
- Blue Host
- Box
- Braintree
- Business Insider
- CNBC
- CNN
- Cleveland.com
- Constant Contact
- Credit Karma
- DailyNews.com
- Disqus
- Donorschoose.org
- Elder Scrolls Online
- Etsy
- Eve Online
- Eventbrite
- Fortune
- Fox News
- Freshbooks
- FT.com
- Genonebiology.com
- Github
- GoPaperless
- Grubhub
- Guardian.co.uk
- HBO Now
- Iheart.com (iHeartRadio)
- Imgur
- Indeed.com
- IndieGoGo
- Intercom.com
- Kayak
- Livestream.com
- Netflix
- New York Times
- NHL.com
- NimbleSchedule
- Okta
- PagerDuty
- PayPal
- People.com
- PlayStation Network
- Qualtrics
- Recode
- Salsify
- SBNation
- Seamless
- Shopify
- Soundcloud
- Speedtest.net
- Spotify
- Squarespace
- Starbucks rewards/gift cards
- Storify.com
- Survey Monkey
- Time
- Trulia
- Twillo
- Urbandictionary.com
- The Verge
- Vox.com
- Weather.com
- Weebly
- Wikia
- Wired
- Wix customer sites
- WSJ.com
- Wufoo.com
- Xbox.com
- Yammer
- Yelp
- Youneedabudget.com
- Zendesk.com
- Zillow
- Zoho CRM
Inman will update this story with more information as it becomes available. Know of an affected site that’s not on our list? Leave it in a comment below or email Amber Taufen to have it added.