Pusher DNS Hacked?

http://pusher.com

by bonf • 13 years ago

10 8 13 years ago

pusher.com

Using Google's 8.8.8.8 DNS server I get a "parked domain" style site on 208.73.210.85

bonf• 13 years ago

using Google's 8.8.8.8 DNS server I get a "parked domain" style site on 208.73.210.85

jnthn• 13 years ago

Looks like the domain expired but they are working on it.

https://twitter.com/pusher/status/341136374243659776

pilif• 13 years ago

If I was relying on a third party for push notifications (something I can easily do on my own, btw), the one single reason for downtime that would totally not be acceptable for me is them forgetting to renew their domain.

This is a huge indicator, IMHO, that they don't really believe in their service and don't even do the absolute minimum that's required for keeping it up.

Worse, depending on the type of message I'm passing through them, this might have privacy or security implications as messages will now be sent to a non-related third party.

Stuff like this is why I personally am very, very careful before outsourcing any part of my core infrastructure.

pfg• 13 years ago

Yeah, because that could totally not happen to any serious organization[0][1][2].

Of course it's a major oversight, but these things happen. They'll learn from their mistake. I think it's wrong to dismiss a product just because they forgot to renew their domain, unless they keep messing up stuff like that all the time.

(I am in no way affiliated with Pusher)

[0] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/06/microsoft_forgets_to...

[1] http://www.webip.com.au/major-bank-forgets-to-renew-domain-n...

[2] http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/27/foursquare-offline/

dxm• 13 years ago

We looked at using Pusher but having looked at their financials[0], we decided to implement similar functionality ourselves. Personally, I don't think the business is sustainable since it's trivial to build web socket functionality into an application, and hosting it on AWS or similar PaaS is cheap too.

[0] https://www.duedil.com/company/07489873/pusher-limited/finan...

maxthelion2• 13 years ago

Relying on this kind of financial data for an early stage company is always a bit risky. AFAICS, this is for the year ending March 2012, when we were significantly smaller than we currently are. We only turned on the ability to pay in August 2011!

Those financials have very little bearing on our current position. For the record, we're now profitable and growing healthily.

EthanEtienne• 13 years ago

I here you, but sh!t happens. The lesson for me though is to choose your domain registrar as carefully as your infrastructure host, and have it be actively monitored like the rest of your infrastructure. I would still choose Pusher though. It's hard to scale everything in-house on limited resources, plus they make using WebSockets super easy (disclaimer: previous Pusher client).

maxthelion2• 13 years ago

I'm Max Williams, CEO of Pusher, and I wanted to add a quick comment to this.

Having your domain name expire is pretty high on the list of most embarrassing things to cause issues. The reality of the situation is that registering a domain comes quite early in a company's history, before you have some of the information management systems in place. In our case, the reminder emails went to a single individual, who somehow managed to miss them. We have changed the contact details, and will be doing a post-mortem to make sure similar scenarios are covered in our integration tests.

It certainly doesn't indicate any lack of care for the reliability of the service. It's simply the result of a ridiculous administrative failing.

I am very sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Pusher DNS Hacked?

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