Cyber Incident Victim: Namecheap
Date:
Feb 2014
Location:
United States of America
Summary
A domain registrar and hosting provider experienced a massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack targeting approximately 300 domains directly, while causing widespread connectivity disruptions across its DNS platform affecting hundreds of thousands of associated domains. The attack exceeded 100Gbps in scale, overwhelming infrastructure due to its unprecedented nature and magnitude, though the company stabilized 99% of servers following mitigation efforts. This incident followed similar large-scale DDoS attacks against other major internet infrastructure providers in preceding years, though no perpetrators claimed responsibility for this specific event.
| CIA Posture | Motives | Tactics, Techniques & Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| Available to members | 1 motive | 1 technique |
| Threat Actors | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|
| 0 actors | Available to members | Available to members |
Description
On February 20, 2014, Namecheap experienced a significant distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that disrupted services for its customers. The attack began in the morning, targeting approximately 300 domain names hosted by the company. Due to the scale of Namecheap's DNS infrastructure, which supported hundreds of thousands of domains, the attack caused widespread connectivity issues beyond the initially targeted domains. Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall and Vice President Matt Russell described the attack as unprecedented, estimating its volume at over 100Gbps—a magnitude that overwhelmed their DNS servers and caused sluggish performance or inaccessibility for affected services. They emphasized this was a novel attack vector that neither Namecheap nor their hardware and network partners had previously encountered, complicating initial mitigation efforts. The incident occurred amid a broader trend of large-scale DDoS attacks, with a 400Gbps attack against a CloudFlare customer reported the prior week surpassing the previous record held by a 2013 Spamhaus attack.
Namecheap's leadership acknowledged the attack's severity in a public blog post, stating their defenses typically repelled DDoS attempts but were insufficient against this scale. By the end of the incident response, they had contained the attack and restored normal operations for 99% of their servers. No individual or group claimed responsibility for the disruption. Historical context noted Namecheap's growth following a 2011 "move your domain" campaign protesting rival GoDaddy's support for SOPA legislation, as well as GoDaddy's own 2009 DDoS incident that disabled thousands of websites. The article also referenced WordPress's 2011 DDoS attack impacting millions of blogs, illustrating the recurring threat to major hosting providers. Namecheap's post-incident update clarified the initial domain impact figure while confirming service stabilization without disclosing specific technical countermeasures or long-term operational consequences.