Official Hostgator Response to the downtime

Gus D. July 27, 2016 at 02:43 PM Hello, Thank you for your response. To further clarify our previous contacts, your server's primary IP (REDACTED) experienced a Direct Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, and the IP was mitigated to protect the integrity of our network. This issue should now be resolved, and I am able to access WHM, cPanel, etc over the IP at this time. Please verify this from your end as well. Our logs indicate an instance of a similar attack occurring on this IP address back in 2013, but that event would have *not* have had any sort of effect on this most recent issue. We apologize for any confusion caused by our earlier contact. As for steps you can take to help prevent DDoS attacks, you are already using Cloudflare, which is an excellent way of hiding your server's IP. However, the domain is configured to use the same server for both http and mail purposes. If your mail server hosted by the same IP as your http server, an attacker could find the IP address from an outgoing email or even by a standard mx lookup. I've included some articles below from our online knowledgebase and from the Cloudflare website which contains some information you may find to be helpful: http://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/security-abuse/what-security-measures-are-used-to-protect-my-server https://blog.cloudflare.com/ddos-prevention-protecting-the-origin/ https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170166-General-website-security-guidelines https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us/articles/200170196-I-am-under-DDoS-attack-what-do-I-do- We do apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please let us know that as well. We'll be happy to assist in any way that we can. Sincerely, Gus D. Linux Systems Administrator