Introduction

This document serves as a Root Cause Analysis for the Primo service interruption experienced by Ex Libris customers on November 2nd, 20189

The goal of this document is to share our findings regarding the event, specify the root cause analysis, outline actions to be taken to solve the downtime event, as well as preventive measures Ex Libris is taking to avoid similar cases in future.

Event Timeline

Service interruption was experienced by Ex Libris customers served by the Primo TC APAC02 instance at the APAC Data Center during the following hours:

November 2^nd, 2019 from 6:58 PM until 7:31 PM Singapore time.

During the event, the service was unavailable for the environment.

Root Cause Analysis

Ex Libris Engineers investigated this event to determine the root cause analysis with the following results:

Analyzing the event, Ex Libris engineers have identified a sophisticated Denial of Service (DoS) attempt, utilizing a specific pattern resulting in a high load on the environment which eventually caused a service disruption.  

Ex Libris engineers have blocked this pattern.

Technical Action Items and Preventive Measures

Ex Libris has taken the following action and preventive measures to avoid such an occurrence in future:

• Ex Libris engineers have blocked this pattern and performed restart to part of the environment components to bring it back to full functionality

Customer Communication 

ExLibris is committed to providing customers with prompt and ongoing updates during Cloud events. Ongoing and prompt updates on service interruptions appear in the system status portal at this address: http://status.exlibrisgroup.com/

These updates are automatically sent as emails to registered customers.

Publication History