It looks like there is no place for DailyStormer on the regular web whatsoever.
On August 24th (Thursday), DreamHost, a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar suffered a series of massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks affecting its servers causing connectivity issues.
The attack affected company’s customer support, web and email services forcing a number of websites to go offline. The attacks were directed at DreamHost’s Domain Name Servers (DNS) which is an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses since domain names are alphabetic, they’re easier to remember.
The hosting giant is home to more than 1,500,000 websites from all over the world including Columbia University and Cambridge Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Initially, at 6:02 PM, DreamHost tweeted that “Our Admins are currently investigating connectivity issues which indicate an issue related to our name servers.”
Our Admins are currently investigating connectivity issues which indicate an issue related to our name servers. https://t.co/lKHkNtldcJ
— DreamHost (@DreamHost) August 24, 2017
After few minutes another tweet appeared informing the customer about the current status of the service: “Our Admins are investigating connectivity issues and will provide updated information as it becomes available.”
Our Admins are investigating connectivity issues and will provide updated information as it becomes available https://t.co/lKHkNtldcJ
— DreamHost (@DreamHost) August 24, 2017
After almost an hour at 7:11 PM, the company revealed that the DNS degradation has been caused as a result of DDoS attacks. “Our engineers have identified the cause of the DNS degradation as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack,” the tweet said.
Our engineers have identified the cause of the DNS degradation as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. https://t.co/lKHkNtldcJ
— DreamHost (@DreamHost) August 24, 2017
At 9:27 PM DreamHost sent another tweet revealing the good news that their service has been restored. “At this time, all services have been restored and are operational. We’ll continue to update this post here.”
At this time, all services have been restored and are operational. We'll continue to update this post here https://t.co/lKHkNtldcJ
— DreamHost (@DreamHost) August 24, 2017
However, after almost 2 hours since DreamHost’s final tweet about the attack; angry customers made sure to give their feedback on Twitter and said that their websites are still suffering the aftermath of the DDoS attacks.
Who carried these attacks and why?
It all started with a neo-Nazi and racist website DailyStormer that was previously booted off by GoDaddy, Google, and even Russian domain provider for posting obvious content. Its admins then decided to take the site to the dark web; however, the site came back on the regular web with a new domain name “punishedstormer.com.”
DreamHost was hosting the domain and this could be the reason for the DDoS attacks on its servers. The company’s customers also tweeted that DreamHost should get rid of Punishedstormer as soon as possible.
Thats a lie. DDos attacked still has knocked you out. Remove #PunishedStormer hosting. Stop supporting Nazis and White Supremacist websites.
— Adam Mikael ❄ (@Revenant_Media) August 24, 2017
Come to your senses @DreamHost @DreamHostCare. Drop the neo nazis or we move our several business websites elsewhere
— Simon Bell (@subaquanaut) August 25, 2017
Apparently, DreamHost sensed what’s going on and suspended the hosting account for the site. At the time of publishing this article; the new domain was offline.
Why did you remove https://t.co/GFQzs4TxNa from your services?
— TinMan (@TinMan1325) August 24, 2017
It’s unclear who was behind the attack, but @OpStandUpToCFAA tweeted about the event with hashtag Anonymous that indicates the alleged involvement of the hacktivist group. It was just a couple of weeks ago when Anonymous shut down Charlottesville City website against Unite the Right rally.
Remember, DreamHost is the same platform which made into the news for hosting a website facilitating protests when US president Donald Trump was being inaugurated. On August 15th, The Department of Justice asked DreamHost to handover IP address of 1.3 million users who visited the website before Trump’s inaugurating.
DOJ claims the site planned protests that caused riots in the city, therefore, it has the right to get the IP addresses of 1.3 million visitors. However, DreamHost resisted the demand which forced the department to drop the request but narrowed it down to limited data. More information on the issue is available here.
At the time of publishing this article, DreamHost’s services were restored while the Punishedstormer disappeared as quickly as it reappeared.
