BBC News website takes New Year's Eve break

The BBC News website evidently decided earlier today that it'd had enough of 2015, and took a New Year's Eve break which extended to several hours. Error 500 on BBC News website In solidarity with the hard-working site, we at El Reg knocked off for a few lunchtime liveners ahead of welcoming in 2016 tonight. We'll be back …

[Dave Harvey]

Slow response / timeouts + occasional 500

= DDOS ?

[Lester Haines]

Re: Slow response / timeouts + occasional 500

Could be. It's highly unusual, to be sure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Slow response / timeouts + occasional 500

Auntie is claiming it was DDOS - "Web attack knocks BBC websites offline"

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I be the first to blame North Korea?

[Lester Haines]

You are the first. I'm going to point the finger at Islamic State.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lester's quite correct. It's Dash wot dun it. ...and the evil intellectual terrorism like this will continue to increase uncontrollably until every government agency you've never heard of has its own half witted backdoor in your phone, PC, telly, car, leccy meter, bus-pass...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what they get for insisting you install Flash. Karma's a bitch.

[Charlie Clark]

Actually, I blame Drupal.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just their website

All their streaming services seem to be down, too.

[Ol'Peculier]

Re: It's not just their website

Radio 2 seems to be fine here.

[Mage]

Re: It's not just their website

R4 LW very clear here now.

[calmeilles]

Re: It's not just their website

Ummm.... I'm getting R4 streaming no problem.

[illiad]

Re: It's not just their website

what part of 'streaming' do you not understand??? 'streaming' uses the BBC internet!!!! {roll eyes}

and most likely DAB too...

[Martin an gof]

Re: It's not just their website

Maybe he forgot the "joke" icon, but serious point... if all else fails, tune to LW. Solid as a rock across large chunks of Europe. Unless it falls down, or the valves burn out or something.

Just don't try it in our Kangoo. Something wrong with the suppression in that car and every time the car goes over a bump there's a "squirt" of something on LW.

M.

[Steven Raith]

Re: It's not just their website

Fun fact - Radio 4 being knocked off the airwaves for more than a set period (I believe 72hrs) without explanation is one of the triggers to unleash Trident.

No, seriously.

http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2012/01/02/radio-4s-nuclear-safety-secrets-you-wont-believe-whats-in-the-airwaves/

A very British way to conduct war,

Steven R

[Mike Tubby]

Auntie Beeb's 500 moment of hell?

I particularly like the sense of humor that someone has with the error graphic... the clown from Test Card F, the blackboard with 500 written on it, something in the background going up in flames and the whole image set on light grey grid with colour bars at the top and bottom...

... BOFM moment?

Mike

[Lester Haines]

Re: Auntie Beeb's 500 moment of hell?

Yes, nicely done.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Auntie Beeb's 500 moment of hell?

Yes, nicely done

ditto

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/404_img.jpg

[BagOfSpanners]

Re: Auntie Beeb's 500 moment of hell?

I agree it's a nice 500 page, but the HTML alone is 61KBytes, mostly CSS. If they are being DDOSed, should they really be trying to serve such a bulky error page?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Auntie Beeb's 500 moment of hell?

Why would a DDoS result in a 500 server error?

[JoshOvki]

Re: Auntie Beeb's 500 moment of hell?

> Why would a DDoS result in a 500 server error?

Loads of traffic passed through the apache sever in the DMZ to the Web Server(s) in the background. Causes the webserver(s) to grind to a hault and lose connection the the apache server in the DMZ. Apache server will see this as a 500 error.

[Colin Miller]

Re: Auntie Beeb's 500 moment of hell?

Possibly should be 503-Service Unavailable or 504-Gateway Timeout instead.

[Gary Heard]

Erratic

It's very erratic, working, gone, working again, gone again.

I think DDOS is the most likely cause, and if I was looking to bring the "Mighty" BBC down, I'd try it in the Christmas holidays. Some sysadmins on duty, but the majority I imagine will be off preparing for the change of the year.

Don't envy those working or those on call, I would imagine they are up to their necks in the mire.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Erratic

"I think DDOS is the most likely cause"

Why?

Is a DDoS more likely than a technical error? Is the BBC really more vulnerable to a DDoS than a fuckup?

[TeeCee]

Re: Erratic

Everyone's more vulnerable to a DDOS than a fuckup.

For a start, you don't get fired for being DDOS'd.

In this business, if you know of an excuse for a calamitous ballsup that gets you out of the frame and that you know everyone'll buy without question, you bloody well use it!

[John Sager]

Re: Erratic

news.bbc.co.uk - I get RST

www.bbc.co.uk/news works OK for me. (@ 10:55 31/12/15)

[illiad]

Re: Erratic

yes, the main news was up again about 11 :)

[Netscrape]

Re: Erratic

"Some sysadmins on duty, but the majority I imagine will be off preparing for the change of the year."

hold on, sysadmins are needed to make New Year happen. Is there anything they cannot do?

[h4rm0ny]

Re: Erratic

>>"hold on, sysadmins are needed to make New Year happen. Is there anything they cannot do?"

Not if they have root access. ;)

(beer icon for our friends working on New Year's Eve to fix this).

[Your alien overlord - fear me]

At least it's not a 451 error because they said some thing scandalous about the NSA/GCHQ

[Locky]

Do you want to play Global Thermonuclear War?

Let's hope the Trident submarine commanders still surface to hear The Today Programme rather than just pinging the site, else 2016 could be much shorter than anticipated...

[illiad]

Re: Do you want to play Global Thermonuclear War?

no, how about a nice game of chess... :)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Do you want to play Global Thermonuclear War?

Captain Ramius: Re-verify our range to target... one ping only.

Capt. Vasili Borodin: Captain, I - I - I just...

Captain Ramius: Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.

Capt. Vasili Borodin: Aye, Captain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gov Counter extremist strategy?

Or has it been shut down by the Gov for propagating extremist views?

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor BBC

They're going to have to find some actual techies to fix this one rather than just the bunch of overpromoted webdevs that usually make up their "technical" department. That won't be cheap on new years eve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Poor BBC

Is this not outsourced? Sure I'll find out on Monday

[graeme leggett]

Not even the error page

Main bbc.co.uk not responding "This page can’t be displayed" as a certain well-known browser has it.

bbc iplayer radio app on my phone "if you're connected to the internet, it's probably an issue at our end..."

BBC press office (@BBCPress) have tweeted "we're aware of a technical issue..." some 30 mins ago

[Gomez Adams]

Hope they get it fixed soon. I am suffering Dr Karl podcast withdrawal symptoms ... :(

[keithpeter]

Weather

Weather regional queries not working (brief flash of 'we are experiencing technical problems' text when using search box, then shows list of locations, then just stops when you try to select a location) but National summary page up.

Databases getting hit?

Coat: nice day so off out.

[Mystic Megabyte]

Weather or not

Does this mean that there will be no weather today? From where I'm sitting it's just grey in every direction and an unusual lack of wind. Maybe this is the Matrix's default setting.

Happy New Year everyone :)

[TitterYeNot]

Re: Weather or not

BING BONG! This is a public service announcement.

We regret to inform you that due to exacerbated overuse of the word 'austerity', an unacceptably high number of stories about water being wet and what you really shouldn't put in a dead pigs mouth if you want to be Prime Minister one day, plus the current juju-flop of an economic situation, today's weather has been cancelled and will not be reinstated until further notice.

Please contact whoever you like (as long as it's not us) if you require more information.

Thankyou for your attention.

Oh, and erm, happy new year.

BING BONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Either a DDOS or their web servers are in the basement of one of their nice new buildings in the north west of England and its a PDOS (where the P indicates an unusually excessive amount of rain).

Note for those outside the UK: modern office/school/municipal buildings in the UK are often built with flat roofs and located in areas known to flood; some of them win architectural awards, and then the windows fall out.

[BurnT'offering]

Websites too big to host in a shed

Usually have a CDN in front

[Mike Pellatt]

then the windows fall out

Or the architects decide that concave ones would look nice. Then they inexplicably focus sunlight onto the roadway below and damage cars.

[Tony S]

Getting it on all of their subsites - all browsers.

Have they upset Theresa May recently?

Just I post that, the site comes back up.

[h4rm0ny]

>>>Have they upset Theresa May recently?

>>>Just I post that, the site comes back up.

She heard you.

[Yugguy]

Divide by zero

It probably tried to equate the number of people who accuse the BBC of having a leftwing bias with those who accuse it of being rightwing and disappeated up its own arse.

[chivo243]

Preemptive strike

The PFY doesn't want to work tonight... simple really.

[batfastad]

TITSUP / Brown out

What, no mention of TITSUP?

It's at times like these I spare a thought for the poor operations folks who are no doubt getting glared at by various species of middle-manglement.

As an infra/ops myself, only one phrase adequately sums up these moments... brown out.

My advice, get it fixed then have alot of --------------------->

[Amorous Cowherder]

The joys of outsourcing

So what do you reckon, some muppets decided to start patching some systems at the exact time of year when most people are off on their Xmas break?

( Gimp, 'cos there's some poor bugger in the IT team being severely rodgered right now! )

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: The joys of outsourcing

And its more than likely the 17 yr old intern ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ghost of Mary Whitehouse

WoOOoooOooOooooOoooo

Get that filth off the telly, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ghost of Mary Whitehouse

Ha Ha charade you are.

[Joey]

www.bbc.co.uk/news works

I can't get through to news.bbc.co.uk but www.bbc.co.uk/news works just fine. I found this out but getting there through www.bbc.co.uk. Could it just be a DNS problem?

[Alfie Noakes]

Web attack knocks BBC websites offline

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35204915

mb

[allthecoolshortnamesweretaken]

BOFH to the rescue

[Peter Kavanagh.]

DDOS appears to be confirmed

Seems it was:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35204915

I believe Akamai is a large component in their overall web presence - can someone versed in these things outline how this might have played out?

[taxman]

Oh Dear

www.bbc.co.uk

Address lookup

canonical name a1733.g.akamai.net.

aliases www.bbc.co.uk

www.bbc.net.uk

www.bbc.co.uk.edgesuite.net

So either it was a massive DDoS that could overcome Akamai's Edgeserevrs (assuming BBC do not just use European ones) or there was a bit of a cockup in some configuration activity within BBC or Akamai.

[Mike Tubby]

Re: Oh Dear

Yuk!

Double CNAME lookup.... horrid... didn't look like that last time I checked!

... and no IPV6 either !

root@ns0:/var/cache/bind/mike# dig www.bbc.co.uk

; <<>> DiG 9.9.5-3ubuntu0.5-Ubuntu <<>> www.bbc.co.uk

;; global options: +cmd

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 31455

;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 8, ADDITIONAL: 9

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:

; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;www.bbc.co.uk. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:

www.bbc.co.uk. 300 IN CNAME www.bbc.net.uk.

www.bbc.net.uk. 300 IN CNAME www.bbc.co.uk.edgesuite.net.

www.bbc.co.uk.edgesuite.net. 7200 IN CNAME a1733.g.akamai.net.

a1733.g.akamai.net. 20 IN A 92.123.140.41

a1733.g.akamai.net. 20 IN A 92.123.143.249

[chivo243]

Akamai? Breach?

I just read here on El Reg that Akamai was possibly fingered in the Steam Christmas Day pfaffing.

2 x Akamai honorable El Reg mentions in one day?

Seems plausible that certain clients of Akamai are being targeted on two big western holidays.

[taxman]

Re: Akamai? Breach?

Then again are the Beeb just using Akamai for CDN rather than CDN and DDoS protection? They do have some IP addresses out in plain sight so a DDoS could have gone through the back door

Try looking up without the www and you get

canonical name bbc.co.uk.

aliases

addresses

212.58.244.22

212.58.244.23

212.58.246.79

212.58.246.78

[Mark 85]

Re: Akamai? Breach?

It does seem that way, doesn't it? There's been several heavy, multi-day attacks lately and it's very troubling. Such as "who's launching them?" "Why?" "What else are the originators of the attack doing in the background? IOW, DDoS is a cover for something else?". And lastly "who's next?".

Who ever is controlling these attacks has some access to some serious assets. I'm not buying the argument it's "bored script kiddies on school holiday". There were several prior to the holidays starting.

[Chris Evans]

Up and down like the proverbial...

bbc.co.uk

Down for me from 1.45 to 2.08

Now Up at 2.10

[Anonymous Coward]

World's most pointless cyber attack

Well done 'hackers', you managed to disrupt BBC. You've gained nothing politically or financially but at least it will make you feel big and clever so it wasn't completely a waste of effort. Also, any action that deprives viewers of the brain rot that is "Eastenders" can't be all that bad.

[illiad]

Re: World's most pointless cyber attack

NOPE, it *wasnt* the BBC.... JUST their website!!

[Mage]

Happily, all now appears to be well,

not 5min ago.

Sometimes doesn't load at all.

[Lester Haines]

Re: Happily, all now appears to be well,

Perfectly ok here. Maybe still a few wobbles?

[Mage]

Back?

usually bbc.co.uk loads bbc.com for me, except on one linux box.

http://www.bbc.com/news seems now to have recovered.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

This Connection is Untrusted

Firefox still complaining about https://www.bbc.co.uk/news

www.bbc.co.uk uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is only valid for the following names:

a248.e.akamai.net, *.akamaihd.net, *.akamaihd-staging.net, *.akamaized.net, *.akamaized-staging.net

(Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)

[Dazzz]

Here we go again

Looks like someone is having another go today

[Mage]

Gone again NYD

bbc.com/news fails instantly.

bbc.co.uk/news redirects to bbc.com and dies

The connection was reset

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.

The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.

If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.

If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

[RB_]

Not fixed in my eyes

Some of us really old school people, we access the news from the subdomain news.bbc.co.uk and this has not been restored.

I would update my 20+ year old book marks but modern web browsers have made this impossible with their completely mindless/pointless fiddling with the browser UI, I can't find my bookmarks even when I try.

[anttix]

Re: Not fixed in my eyes

That would explain it. I'm also a news.bbc.co.uk man.

[anttix]

Still... odd.

When I go to BBC.co.uk I still sometimes get an error page, then it autorefreshes and comes up.

[Nifty]

The future of TV is online

It's been said many a time and is now happening for real - TV is moving off expensive free to air bandwidth and going online.

E.g. BBC 3 going online-only this year.

So will this be seen as a stress test?

Be interesting if a DDOS hits your news service just as a terrorist attack starts...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://uk.reuters.com is working fine, for those needing a news fix.

[Anonymous Coward]

Still not working for me. Attempting to access http://www.bbc.com/news , I get 'The connection was reset'.

Attempting to access http://www.bbc.co.uk/news gets successfully redirected to http://www.bbc.com/news ; and then reset.

[Bruce Ordway]

New World Hacking test?

Latest story is that some anti IS group "New World Hacking" was just testing their DDOS capabilities?

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2016/01/04/bbc-websites-still-suffering-after-ddos-attack.html

I wonder why they chose the BBC? It seems "mostly harmless" to me.

There must be a few other sites that are just as "big" & more deserving of a timeout.

[Roo]

Re: New World Hacking test?

"I wonder why they chose the BBC? It seems "mostly harmless" to me."

To quote a quote from a BBC article on the matter "Because we can", apparently they were just testing their 1337 scripts and had a bit of trouble stopping the spam torrent (presumably because the attack took out their own control channels).

I am guessing that they think that because just a "test" and the duration was an "accident" it is OK because they are "Anti ISIS"... I wonder if the plods will be kicking their doors down at 3AM.