INTERNET SITE SLOWNESS - Here is VASUP!

I'm sure this is affecting a lot of you....and other sites in addition to Famous.

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Breaking News from Famous Smoke Shop

Many of our customers have been wondering why our websites have been slow or inaccessible for the past five days. The problem was due to a targeted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, similar to what has recently been happening to some large government websites, financial institutions, and e-commerce sites in the U.S. and abroad. For those of you who do not know what a "DDoS" is and what it is not, I will briefly explain. First and foremost, no one's personal data has been compromised. I want to assure you that all your personal data is safe, protected and intact.
So what is DDoS? These attacks occur when a flood of traffic is deliberately sent to a particular website in an effort to overwhelm the site and prevent legitimate users from getting through. This is exactly what occurred over the last five days to famous-smoke.com and to some of our competitors in the premium cigar industry. WE ARE NOW BACK, and I have taken steps to ensure that this cyber terrorism will never happen to Famous Smoke Shop again:
We have contracted with experts in the internet security industry to mitigate the attack, and our website was successfully brought back on line Sunday evening. Our security consultants will continue to monitor our network traffic to combat the continued attacks. In partnership with our security consultants, we have performed exhaustive security audits of our networks, servers and websites. Again, I want to reiterate that in no way was our security breached or our data compromised. Although the attackers were successful in generating enough traffic to bring our websites down, we were not "hacked," and all of your personal data has been, and continues to remain, secure.
Like many of you, until a few days ago, I had never heard of DDoS, nor did I understand how widespread this problem has become in the ecommerce sector, how vulnerable we were, or what the consequences of such cyber terrorism would be. Had all retail cigar websites been affected, as some others were, your online cigar supply lines would have been severed completely.
Unfortunately for me, while this disaster was occurring, I was in Nicaragua and Honduras, and did not fully understand what was happening to my company. You can only imagine my frustration. All I was thinking about was creating new products for my customers, and I'm pleased to report that we have some excellent new surprise cigars on the way.
Thankfully, right now our company is functioning normally again. We were attacked. Jealous competitor? Anti-smoking terrorist? It's impossible to know at this point. Suffice to say, we are doing everything in our power to get to the bottom of it. Moreover, because of the deliberate targeting of our industry, and the scale and duration of the attack, Federal authorities have taken an active interest in pursuing the attackers and we intend to cooperate fully.
Even more frustrating was being unable to communicate and inform you about the situation until now, since our email was out of action as well. Therefore, I apologize to all of you, my valued customers, for the inconvenience and the silence.
Sincerely,
Arthur Zaretsky
President,
Famous Smoke Shop-PA, Inc.
www.famous-smoke.com

[Volt]

I was actually going to make a joke about a DDOS attack from the anti-smoking terrorist the other day. I had no idea how close to the truth I actually was. I hope the catch (not likely) the perps and bust a few keyboard fingers.

[shilala]

I figured it was PETA.

Too funny - I had mentioned that I hoped this wasnt the new flavor of anti-tobacco and asked for my tinfoil hat in the other thread. I guess tinfoil hats DO work! Lol
Posted via Mobile Device

[Wolfgang]

Famous is still not loading for me.

[sikk50]

Working for me now

[Skywalker]

I'm back to spending money!!!

Originally Posted by Skywalker

I'm back to spending money!!!

Sorry Darrell!

[GoldnGT]

alot of webhosting servers were getting hit. including the private server that we host www.themustangsource.com on. luckally the hosting company that hosts our server keeps a watchful eye and was able to load a software package to autoblock IPs taht were hitting the server multiple times. One of the ones it blocked was bouncing out of Tunisia....

[Skywalker]

Originally Posted by Skywalker

I'm back to spending money!!!

Originally Posted by mrreindeer

Sorry Darrell!

So is my wife!!!

[eber]

still not working for me

[gnukfu]

Good thing no one attacked my B&M!

[itsme_timd]

I was able to get on Cigar Monster just long enough to find something I had to have. Cigar Monster is evil, I think that's why these sites were targeted. Guilt by association.

[The Poet]

As I posted elsewhere on Saturday, I placed an order with JR that day with no problems whatsoever. All this means is that it was apparently not an industry-wide attack, or at least not a successful one if it was intended to be so. I doubt if a "jealous competitor" would launch an attack such as this, so if it was mainly the cigar sites targeted it would seem more logical to suspect anti-smoking terrorists. Just , brothers.

[Tuxguy]

I have been winning auctions like crazy on that one site that most fear. Worked out well for some that others could not get on

[shemp]

stiil no monster for me either

[GoldnGT]

CM is working this morning for me!!

Originally Posted by gnukfu

Good thing no one attacked my B&M!

Just you George!

[Tio Gato]

I think that Lew Rothman is taking computer classes at the old folks home.