Isn't it strange?

Dear James,

Thanks for the call.  And thank you for sharing your concern about  
this, which we share, along with literally tens of thousands of  
petition authors altogether.

This is already our worst outage in nearly ten years of petition  
hosting, and it is still ongoing.  A basic discussion of the DDoS  
attack being waged against us is posted here:
[url=http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28380]http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28380[/url]

Even though our servers are and have been running fine, and the data  
on them is safe, they remain temporarily unreachable over the  
Internet due to this attack.

Please feel free to share that information link widely.  There are  
tens of thousands of active petitions at any given time on  
PetitionOnline, and each of those represents an author and community  
of concern.  To our great frustration, with the PetitionOnline site  
inaccessible, we don't have a good direct way to get information to  
site users.

At least that information link can be readily found now by a Google  
search.  We'll post updates there as more information on this urgent  
and serious situation becomes available.

We appreciate your support of PetitionOnline, more than ever during  
this time of ridiculous Internet political warefare!

With best wishes,

Kevin Matthews


Judy Ness
ArchitectureWeek
Advertising Sales and Marketing
[email]ads@artifice.com[/email]
541-345-7421 vox.
541-345-7438 fax.
800-203-8324 USA toll free

With apologies and appreciation to all who have written us with questions and support around the ongoing network outage to PetitionOnline, caused by a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, given the volume of letters, I'm sending this out as a general response.

General overview, useful links, and a few comments:
[url=http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28380]http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28380[/url]

Most recent update, including a copy of our letter to the FBI:
[url=http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28417]http://www.designcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28417[/url]


PetitionOnline has been inaccessible to everyone since sometime Friday morning, making this by far our worst outage in nearly ten years of petition hosting, and still ongoing.  

Our servers are and have been running fine, and the data on them is safe.  However, because this attacks blocks all web access to the site, PetitionOnline remains temporarily unreachable over the Internet.  Literally tens of thousands of active petitions are stuck on hold while this crisis continues.

Given the nature of PetitionOnline related to grassroots advocacy, there is a good chance there is some kind of political motive behind this massive and anonymous attack.  We will not yield to such tactics.  The site will be fully usable again, picking up again just where we were Friday morning, just as soon as we can get this resolved, by any means available whether technical, through law enforcement, or both.

Please feel free to share that information link widely.  There are tens of thousands of active petitions at any given time on PetitionOnline, and each of those represents an author and community of concern.  To our great frustration, with the PetitionOnline site inaccessible, we don't have a good direct way to get information to site users.

And thanks so much for your support, which we truly need and value now, as always, and more than ever.

with best wishes,

Kevin Matthews
PetitionOnline
Artifice, Inc.
541-345-7421 office 
541-345-7438 fax 
PO Box 1588 
Eugene, OR 97440