Fastly claims single customer responsible for widespread internet outage
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/9/22525820/fastly-outage-bug-customer
Reported today in The Verge.
Fastly claims single customer responsible for widespread internet outage
The Fastly content delivery network (CDN) - a major middleman in internet traffic - took a nap for around an hour early Tuesday morning, and effectively knocked a huge number of major websites offline in the process. The company is now claiming the issue stemmed from a bug and one customer's configuration change.
"We experienced a global outage due to an undiscovered software bug that surfaced on June 8 when it was triggered by a valid customer configuration change," Nick Rockwell, the company's SVP of engineering and infrastructure wrote in a blog post last night. "This outage was broad and severe, and we're truly sorry for the impact to our customers and everyone who relies on them."
Apparently, whatever the request was, it triggered a bug that had only been introduced to Fastly's systems by an update in mid-May. Clearly the fault lies with Fastly for not catching that it borked its own code, but we have to ask: Who did it? Valid change or no, some specific, unnamed customer triggered the bug. It's obvious why Fastly has not named the customer or the exact set of circumstances that created this undesirable outcome, but we just want to know: What does it feel like to take down half the internet by accident?
And on the off chance it wasn't an accident... please spare The Verge next time.