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Envato Under Two-Week Long DDOS from Unknown Attacker

Marketplaces go on and offline in intermittent intervals

Jul 14, 2015 11:42 GMT  ·  By
Envato sees huge DDOS attack on its network
   Envato sees huge DDOS attack on its network

Envato, the network of marketplaces where users can sell anything from 3D graphics to stock photography, from WordPress themes to music, is under a two-week long DDOS attack from an unknown assailant.

In a post on Inside Envato, the company's official blog, the team put more light on the issue that's been plaguing their service since July 1.

"The attacker, whose motive and identity are unknown, has repeatedly flooded our servers with high levels of traffic, causing our services to be unavailable at various times," said the Envato team.

Envato authors lose $25,570 / €23,184 for each hour of downtime

The Melbourne-based Australian company was forced to issue a statement after the attacks were getting more frequent, and its community started to take notice, especially the authors who rely on the servers staying up to make money.

Since Envato paid its authors around $224,000,000 / €203,000,000 just in 2014, that translates to a total of $25,570 / €23,184 for each hour of downtime.

The most recent issues the company faced were last Friday, July 10, when it was down for three hours, and this Sunday, July 12, when it was taken down for another hour.

No financial information has been leaked

Since the company also employs a large number of professionals from around the world, going forward, the Envato team announced changes to its internal procedures for handling this kind of situations at all times.

Besides the probable personnel shuffles and new job duties, technical upgrades to their DDOS mitigation service are also planned since they seem to have been regularly slow to react.

"Please know that your data is safe and we are fully committed to mitigating the situation and minimizing future unplanned downtime," said the Envato team. No data leaks or breaches have been reported, and the DDOS wasn't used to mask an intrusion into Envato's database, which can be quite the treasure trove if you know what to look for.