Even Stronger Than Ever
Hey Everyone, we’re going to be back soon and even stronger than ever.
After a tremendous amount of research in the last 30-or-so hours, I have not only located and locked-down the problem, but looked at some of the more lower-level aspects of Zooomr’s infrastructure to fine-tune our systems to meet both attackers and our users.
As Thomas had posted previously, this attack will only make us better, stronger, and more evasive to attacks and ill-willed individuals.
So, now that our infrastructure’s resources have been fine-tuned and ripe to go now, You’ll see a huge speed increase along with the new design and new features.
I understand that this is frustrating to many people, but not as nearly as frustrating for me — trust me that I have your best interest in mind, and that I’ll be returning the service by a yet undetermined time on Monday, July 17th.
I’ve had to make-up for a lot of time taken away from understanding and fighting these fires, and I hope that the ill-will of some unnamed group or individual will not dampen the excitement of our 2.0 release.
So, in a way to say “Thanks!”, I’ve uploaded this screenshot of what Zooomr 2.0 will look like.
Thank-you,
Kristopher Tate
EDIT: And yes, we will still be offering free Pro accounts to bloggers the world over 
The All New Zooomr 2.0
Hosted on Zooomr
July 16th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
Are you still offering the free pro accounts to bloggers?
July 16th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
It looks good. Hope to see it soon. Great work Kris.
July 16th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Thanks for the update Kris, sounds great! Looking forward to the release!
For us bloggers, how long do we get to keep the pro status?
July 16th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
One year, just like if you would have bought it.
July 16th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
[…] UPDATE: This just in from the official blog: Hey Everyone, we’re going to be back soon and even stronger than ever. […]
July 16th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
I dont understand how a DOS attack is only affecting your domain alone. And how they have enough power to do it. DOS attacks are extremely rare due to the amount of repition and computers need to do it. Especially since I didn’t see your blog go down through out this time.
Sorry to say I think your lieing.
July 16th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Good work lads…Looking forward to release.
July 16th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
Very excited and thanks for the update.
July 16th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Hi Frank,
I’m sorry that you think that we’re lying. Though, now that it’s over, here’s the nature of the attack.
To be honest, whomever was attacking us were not interested in bringing us down as much as it seemed that they wanted to cripple us. You’re right in that DDOS is a serious thing that takes many systems, but in this case, it would seem very clear to me and my NOC that the attack was coming from many Zombie Windows XP boxes in the wild.
Most of the attack was based on SYN-packet flooding. In affect, this kind of attack does not require umpteen amounts of bandwidth, but enough computers to keep many unused connections open to our systems.
In the end, it was hard to lock-down these attacks because as we started to in the wee hours of July 14th, the attacker was smart enough to start spoofing and mangling their packets to get past our protection layers.
Regardless, I can now safely report to you that this kind of attack will not be a problem to Zooomr, and I hope that you will be taking the time to view Zooomr 2.0 shortly.
Best,
-Kristopher
July 16th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
It sounds like you made lemonade out of lemons.
See you tomorrow.
July 16th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Sounds great. Cheers for the update. Take all the time you need.
July 16th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Looks great - can’t wait to continue uploads. I’ve pretty much decided to do away with my old coppermine account on my own server - even the non-2.0 version of Zooomr kicked arse in comparison.
Here’s hoping it’s an early release on Monday the 17th. I have much to uplaod. May The Force be with us all.
July 16th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Congratulations, I’m sure I’ll be very happy to test Zooomr2 tomorrow. About time
but I’m sure it’ll be worth the time
P.S. I hope that in all the mess you had time to adjust the “proitizer” to handle blog platforms like mine (see relevant comment a few posts down)
July 16th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
[…] It was supposed to be on Friday when Zooomr launched 2.0 but there has been a slight delay because of a denial of service (DOS) attack. The screenshot above is of the new Zooomr 2.0 that Kristopher Tate posted as a preview of what we can expect to see soon. They appear to be fine tuning the system and should be back up running tomorrow (Monday). […]
July 16th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Tate
Whoever has done that (DOS attack) is either crazy or has nothing better to do in life than destroying other peoples creations
Bottomline is you have survived.
I have heard so much about you and the site thru bloggers ( especially scoble ) that i was eagerly looking forward to try it.
One thing that is misleading is that on your homepage you say we’ll back ASAP and the counter says 01 seconds.
I thought the site will be back in few seconds but that wasnt the case
Please give it thought
Looking forward to the launch …
Sanjay
July 16th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
that’s a good news
July 16th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
No problem Guys
We are stil waiting and looking to see the new one.
Dont worry about a bunch of loosers, trying to keep you away from bringing on good stuff.
Looking forward to tomorrow.
July 16th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Harris, we are still offering free Pro accounts to bloggers — once we are back online. Spread the word.
July 16th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
there is no way we, the faithful, can ever express our gratitude for your lack of sleep, and countless hours pursuing the ‘evildoers’.
rest assured in the knowledge that we will continue to be a strong and loyal following…..
and remember that it is far better to deal with this now, while we’re already down for conversion, than to try it when you’re serving thousands of photos a minute or more…..
as has been said….’this will make you/us stronger…’
hang in….
July 16th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
Kristopher, et al — the best of luck to you. Very much looking forward to seeing 2.0. I’m sure your hard work, intelligence, and dedication will be evident over every square centimetre of it. Ganbatte!
-jh
July 16th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
I love how you delete criticism…
you guys should change it to, “Filtered Comments…actually not comments at all, we only accept praise”
You fake a ddos attack to cover your incompetence.
I can guarentee this site is going no where; nor the photos of those acne ridden, pre-40 year old virgin, losers who are all over the blog. (boyfriends?)
July 16th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
[…] According to Kris, Zooomr will be launching tomorrow (7/16/06). As I mentioned in my previous post, Zooomr had a much hyped deadline on Friday that they missed due to a DOS attack. […]
July 16th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
I look forward to your being back online. I am sorry you have had to go through this but if in the end you have made improvements that will make it a a better platform long-term, than it will be worth the wait.
I hope you have fixed the Google login problem. I will post another blog advertising the free pro upgrade as soon as you are back online.
Thanks
scott@fattriplets.com
July 16th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
gnos…. thanks but NO thanks for your lame-O guarantee as i would rather listen to a drunkard wandering the streets… I think the information coming from him would at least be worth listening to, unlike yours!! like the rest… GET A LIFE
July 16th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Good job guys, I’m really interested in seeing how things are gonna look. I’m really interseted too in the bloggers getting pro accounts. sounds exciting!
Keep it up.
July 17th, 2006 at 12:19 am
La nueva versión de zooomr hoy
Parece que en zooomr están trabajando a toda maquina para conseguir que hoy este al aire por fin.
After a tremendous amount of research in the last 30-or-so hours, I have not only located and locked-down the problem, but looked at some of the more …
July 17th, 2006 at 12:23 am
[…] You’ve just got to feel sorry for these guys. They’ve poured their hearts (and probably their wallets) into this site and now, when the world is waiting with baited breath to see what they can really do, some dickhead decides to punish that youthful enthusiasm with a DOS attack. […]
July 17th, 2006 at 12:35 am
Congrats to the success! The wait for 2.0 can only be worth it. Can’t wait to see the outcome!
July 17th, 2006 at 1:10 am
hi, it is already July 17, even in California. and I still see the counter with 1s left…
Comeon, plug the server before you guys go to bed.
July 17th, 2006 at 1:35 am
[…] Zooomr said in its blog that the attack has been dealt with and they’re just fine-tuning the system to make sure such an attack will not happen again. Zooomr also says that when the new version finally launches, users will “see a huge speed increase along with the new design and new features.” […]
July 17th, 2006 at 3:27 am
Wow, I’m away for a month and you guys are better than ever. Keep Rocking Zooomr. BTW, where can I request a pro account. I’ve been using Zooomr for the past 2 months at my blog.
July 17th, 2006 at 3:50 am
I’m really looking forward to the new Zooomr… So take your time, I’m sure it will be worth it.
July 17th, 2006 at 3:52 am
I can’t view the official homepage, so are you beginning to launch Zooomr 2.0?
July 17th, 2006 at 4:19 am
Anxiously awaiting the arrival!
Side question: How long do the pro accounts last for bloggers who received them? Can we receive this special offer more than once?
July 17th, 2006 at 4:21 am
You can disregard the first comment I made. I see you’ve answered that question already. Sorry for the trouble.
July 17th, 2006 at 4:26 am
Good work folks.
The way I see it - you’ve given me more time to go through my pictures tagging, naming, etc.
Looking forward to the ging live.
(XYU are you referring to not seeing the page with the timer frozen on 1 second? That is the official page till version 2.0 launches in the very near future I believe.)
July 17th, 2006 at 4:40 am
Sweet! I can’t wait to see it in action :).
July 17th, 2006 at 5:17 am
So now that most of the hardwork is done. Will you think of integration with Flock or Firefox.
July 17th, 2006 at 5:18 am
Glad to see you’re surviving. Am I guessing right that your attack has been over with for a while, and this weekend has been spent hardening the servers? (To counter Frank and Gnos). I can’t wait for the new site. See you later.
July 17th, 2006 at 5:55 am
Hope me refreshing the countdown page every few seconds won’t cause any problems. You guys will post it in the blog right.
July 17th, 2006 at 7:30 am
I can’t BELIEVE that people would even think of complaining about the delay!
This just in: ZOOOMR IS FREE!
If Kristopher wanted to take 3 weeks to apply the update, that would be his call. DOS attacks have taken down much larger sites than this, and the fact that they are going back and fixing holes in the code is actually good for you people. It means less downtime in the long run! He owes absolutely nothing to you as an unpaying customer! Go pay for Flickr, I heard it’s up.
July 17th, 2006 at 7:38 am
Good luck you guys. I’m looking forward to the release!
July 17th, 2006 at 8:07 am
I bet a kidney that it won’t launch today.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Kris.
Like I said. I am not in contrary that your servers are not prone to attack. But find it highly unlikely that this attack brought your servers to a halt with your blog still remaining intact.
I’d rather see what happened to Yahoo. Everything in its network came to a dead halt and pages were denyed to users to view.
To James ( I have not disregarded the chance of an attack. BUT the fact that all three postings about the DOS attack were made they same day as the attack was ongoing is total blasphemy.)
How is it Kris that you were able to keep your forums running while the attack was ongoing? Any DNS change to move the forums else where in the event of an attack would take within 24-48 HRS. Or if your luck 2 hrs.
Within that time you had over 300 posts and 1000+ viewings of your website during your supposed attack. Next time when you lie. Make sense.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:10 am
^ Forums = Blog god damnit I need starbucks
July 17th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Frank,
I was there while the attack was going on. The nature of the attack was not to shut the site down but rather to cripple it. To create a situation where things would get really really really unbearably slow. And it was being fought as hard as we could the entire time it was going on. Had we opened up the floodgates there might have been brief periods where when we were winning the battle with the attack that the site would have worked. But it would have been a very very frustrating experience and not at all indicative of what Kris built or how we want to present Zooomr2.
On Friday night we had a room full of some of the most influential people in the tech world. We did everything we could. Don’t you think we’d want to show the site to those people? If there was any way possible to show Zooomr reliably, even regular Zooomr and not Zooomr 2, we would have done this in a heartbeat. But there was not.
Maybe you’d rather have seen our site go completely down but that’s not how the attack took place.
Why the hostility anyways?
And I don’t mean to discredit you or say that you don’t understand how technology works (you do have a tech blog I see) but I was there and saw the thing unfold with my own eyes. So when you’re calling Kris a liar you are also calling me a liar.
Rather than accuse someone of lying and blasphemy maybe asking more questions about the attack itself might be a better way to get at the information that you want.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Frank
I think you’re right, in that a DOS attack was probably not the main reason for taking down the site. However, it revealed shortcomings in the code which were best corrected before launch. If this is the case, then I’m glad they took the time to tweak things.
Kris, in 2.0 I’d like to see a more comprehensive Help or faq section. topics. In the original version, it was very difficult to find information such as the difference between a pro and free account, max upload limits, and amount of storage space. BTW, what are these amounts?
July 17th, 2006 at 8:38 am
Frank,
Take a look at these two links…
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://beta.zooomr.com
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://blog.zooomr.com
The sites are on two totally different subnets running different software.
Ever thing that they may actually be on two different servers or even in two totally different data centers?
July 17th, 2006 at 8:45 am
Those links above should have an underscore between site and report. Looks like the comment system might be using textile. I’ll try linking using that:
“blog”:http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://blog.zooomr.com
“beta”:http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http://beta.zooomr.com
July 17th, 2006 at 8:49 am
[…] Bueno ahí veremos si ponen el post antes de que pongan en línea a Zooomr, porque para el momento aun no se ve claro cuando empiezan a funcionar de nuevo. […]
July 17th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Patiently waiting.
I’m pretty excited.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:44 am
[…] Este es un post de emergencia nacional, porke acabo de ver ke Zooomr 2.0 saldra en 1 segundo, espero escribir lo suficientemente rapido para ke me den mi cuenta PRO alli… si es ke algun dia sakan el servicio. […]
July 17th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
To be honest, i have been looking at zooomr all the time during attack.
As frank says rightly, DOS attacks don’t happen the way it happened with zooomr.
If the attack was only crippling, the blog would have been running very slow and so would have been countdown site, which was absolutely the case.
Moroever countdown page was hosted on zooomr so there is no chance it could have evaded DOS attack.
Since blog is on different subdomain , so there is a possibility of it being on different server.
Seriously, for technical people like frank around, this DOS attack comes as a lie, Honestly if there was anyother issue like problem with applicaiton or last minute redo of something, it would have been fair to declare it that way .
Anyways best of luck with everything, we are still waiting for launch. Great work
July 17th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
[…] A popular Flickr competitor and Web 2.0 start-up Zooomr was planning to launch version 2 of their photo sharing service a couple days ago, but due to a massive denial-of-service attack on their servers the day they were scheduled to launch, the site had to close down for a few extra days. 18-year-old Zooomr founder Kristopher Tate says that their site will be back up sometime today, but at the time of this post a quick trip to Zooomr.com will only lead to a countdown page with a timer stuck at 1 second: […]
July 17th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
well
good luck with the launch.
It has to be in the next 4 hours or so anyway.
July 17th, 2006 at 2:38 pm
[…] Perhaps most interesting (to bloggers) is that they are now offering free accounts (to bloggers). […]
July 17th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
So are you sure you’re launching it today (17th).
Oh please update the Countdown page to tell us where.
I’m so excited, I’m refreshing the page every few minutes.
July 17th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Sohil,
I think they learned their lesson that using a countdown timer is definitely not the best idea…. hence the fact it is not running again today. On a similar note, a little bird whispered in my ear that Zooomr2.0 should HOPEFULLY be released around 5PM PDT. Now please DON’T quote me on this, but I sure hope it is true!!!
Cheers!
July 17th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
To those of questioning why the blog wasn’t running slow during the attack: I believe the blog is running at a completely different location
July 17th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Server Type: lighttpd/1.4.11
IP Address: 70.85.173.122 [Whois] Blacklist Status: Clear
Website Status: Active
Reverse IP: 21 other sites hosted on this server
Yes I am calling you a liar.
In regards to anyone else please get free registration at whois.sc to get a reverseip trace and you will see that zooomr and all its sub domains hosted on one server. If one were to crash so would the other.
I am sorry. BUT I will not accept lies. I get enough of that from microsoft. Anyone else who doubts me visit the site.
I won’t hold this against your product but I will hold this against your person. Afterall you are 19 yrs old. And deadlines arnt one of those things 19yr olds have down pat.
July 17th, 2006 at 5:11 pm
^Also Kudos with the choice of Registar . Type in google search Go Daddy Ripped Me Off.
July 17th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
Franc, as others have shown, the Zooomr Blog (70.85.173.122) is hosted in Dallas, Texas and Zooomr itself (66.35.203.51) is hosted here in Santa Clara, California.
If you look who owns those IP blocks, you’ll definitely know where they are located and also that they are from two different ISPs, even — among other things.
Please stop with the personal attacks, as I’m am certainly capable of holding deadlines; Please be informed that age has nothing to do with it.
Thanks for posting,
-Kristopher
July 17th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Kris I am not one to hold grudges. Have A Wonderful release. It will defintly help the Web 2.0 Community I am also looking forward to it.
July 17th, 2006 at 8:47 pm
Let all see that at 19 years old, Kristoper has conducted himself in this discussion as a perfect gentleman.
July 17th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
And the fact they still have coding issues doesn’t set off a bell? Please.. Childish to lie about DOS attacks.
July 18th, 2006 at 2:23 am
Frank, I was being gracious. I don’t really think there is any need to keep kicking a dead horse. Let’s just take a look at the finished product and then decide if it was worth the wait (for whatever reason that wait occurred).
July 18th, 2006 at 6:23 am
How do you get a pro account if you’re a blogger?
July 19th, 2006 at 5:55 am
Hi guys, I’ve been trying to upgrade my account to a pro account, and this page
http://beta.zooomr.com/proitizer
Tells me that the post URL that I entered
http://range.wordpress.com/2006/07/18/post-reddit-and-delicious-waves-or-how-i-return-to-business-at-hand/
Belongs to someone else. Only thing I did was close a tab at some point in Zooomr. The blog is mine and has been claimed as such on technorati for a while, I don’t understand this error.
I would appreciate some feedback
Thanks
July 19th, 2006 at 6:04 am
Ok fixed it on my end, nevermind guys.
July 19th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
I think zoomr has a lot of work to get the mindshare flickr has, and I think it’s overhyped. That said, it’s pretty clear that the blog and the app are on different boxes. Do script kiddies with nothing better to do attack web startups out of boredom? Yes. Did that happen here? Quite possible. Why does anyone care. Glitches happen. Move on.
July 19th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Is it only actual bloggers that recieve free pro accounts or do livejournal, etc users count as well?
July 20th, 2006 at 7:36 am
Livejournal bloggers are bloggers as well and certainly do count Paige.
July 20th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
One Year? Didn’t read about that anywhere else than here, not even in the upgrade-process, so i got the impression to get Pro-Status without a time limit?. What happens after that year? Esp. with “Pro”-Features, that are already in use (Sets etc.)?
(no offense, i’m aware that i could have missed the info somewhere)
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