14 DAY TRIAL // The popular GitHub website suffered a minor service outage on March 26 due to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. At the moment, the website appears to work properly on our end, but some users still report intermittent connectivity with Git operations.
GitHub’s awesome team of administrators worked hard in the last 24 hours to keep the situation under control, as stated on the GitHub System Status page. “We continue to respond to an ongoing DDoS attack. Some users may experience intermittent connectivity with git operations as we mitigate the problem,” they say.
It appears that the attack started at 1:55 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), when GitHub maintainers reported minor service outage, while trying to identify and mitigate the DoS attack that affected its service. On March 27, at 6:29 UTC, the DDoS attack was amplified again, but one hour later all GitHub services were restored to normal.
We will keep you guys updated on the matter, in case there are more attacks or if the GitHub website is down again. We remind everyone that GitHub is now the number one web-based Git repository-hosting service, where hundreds of thousands of open-source projects keep their source code.
We continue to respond to an ongoing DDoS attack. Some users may experience inter... See more at https://t.co/Z4QAKh0oGe.
— GitHub Status (@githubstatus) March 27, 2015
Update: It appears that the DDoS attack is still ongoing at 12:33 UTC on March 27, but connectivity is back to normal as GitHub's amazing maintainers continue the mitigation. "We're keeping a close eye on our traffic for any abnormalities."
Update 2: At 14:45 UTC on March 27, the GitHub admins announced that they are trying hard to keep up with the DDoS attack, which became even stronger.
Update 3: At 15:04 UTC on March 27, GitHub announced that they've deployed their volumetric attack defenses against the huge DDoS attack. Also, some believe that the Chinese Government is behind the attack, as they're actually attacking GreatFire.org via GitHub by hijacking Baidu’s traffic. Baidu is China's largest search engine.
Sooo... China is accused of attacking @GreatFireChina via @github ddos. Daaaaang. http://t.co/jAKg7NlRco
— The Melissa Virus (@0xabad1dea) March 27, 2015
Update 4: GitHub announced at 19:23 UTC on March 27 that the on-going DDoS attack now affects GitHub Pages too. They are working very hard to mitigate any service disruption.
Update 5: GitHub posted a short announcement on their blog, informing users about the situation. Apparently, the attackers' intent is to convince GitHub to remove a project from their website, most probably related to GreatFire.org. The is the largest DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack in github.com's history! Read more at https://github.com/blog/1981-large-scale-ddos-attack-on-github-com.
Update 6: At 2:30 UTC on March 28, GitHub announced that the DDoS attack now affects both GitHub Pages and assets. They are updating their defenses!
Update 7: At 4:46 UTC on March 28, GitHub announced that they are adapting to the on-going DDoS attack which just changed its strategy.
Update 8: At 16:18 UTC on March 28, GitHub reports that are still working hard to mitigate the evolving large DDoS attack, which affected the website in the last 48 hours.
Update 9: At 14:52 UTC on March 29, GitHub reports that the on-going DDoS attack now affects connectivity to Gist. There are now over 72 hours since the attack on the GitHub website started.
Update 10: After more than 80 hours of continuous DDoS attack, GitHub reports at 0:38 UTC on March 30 that all systems are working 100%. However, it appears that the attack traffic continues, which means that they will remain on high alert.
Update 11: In a conference that took place today, March 30, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying responded on the charge of DDoS attack over Github saying that China is not behind the attack and that they are in fact one of the major victims of cyber attacks worldwide.