Since midday on Monday 18th April, the Autotrader.co.uk website has been subject to a malicious third-party attack which has prevented normal operational services from being delivered. Anyone visiting the site during this attack would have found that Autotrader.co.uk was either intermittently unavailable or extremely slow.
The technical support team is working around the clock to restore services and minimise the impact of similar attacks in the future. Some visitors may still experience difficulty accessing the site today while we resolve the remaining problems.
However, it is important to note that we have no evidence to suggest that any customer data has been lost as a result of the attack and there are no known risks to consumers visiting the site during this time.
Apologies for any inconvenience caused, we’d like to reassure all our customers that we are working very hard to resolve this.
UPDATE (Wednesday 20/04/2011): Thank you for your comments and patience whilst we resolve this issue. There is no evidence that customer data has been compromised. It is important to note that this attack is not a ‘hack’.
Whilst we continue to focus on actually stopping the attack, we are unable to respond to your questions about ad extensions. But please rest assured that we will be in touch with all current advertisers via email once we have stabilised our website.
If you are a dealer with an Auto Trader contract, updates will be posted to Dealer Portal, where you also have access to Dealer Community.
As a result of our work so far there has been an improvement in availability as of this morning, although the attack is still ongoing.
Thanks again for your patience.
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UPDATE (Wednesday 05/05/2011): All services were up and running on autotrader.co.uk from Tuesday 19th April following the incident on Monday 18th. Initially it was necessary for us to implement a blanket ban on all non-UK traffic to ensure business as usual for the majority of our users. Over the course of the week we progressively brought online the more significant overseas locations that our site is used from (predominantly Europe and North America). We have continued to open the site up to more overseas traffic since then and we hope to have full global access restored to the site by the weekend.
We value our non UK based customers as well as our UK customer base and are working to restore service on a global basis as quickly as possible. However, international access may be blocked again if we receive further malicious activity from countries outside the UK
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Looks like the site is under attack again. Been trying to get on for two days know and it is either painfully slow or you cant get on at all. I was going to advertise my car with them but I think it will be a waste of money at the moment as no one can get on there to view it. Does anyone know any other sites good for advertising cars?
Hi, i am in the UAE and i cant get on your website. Is it still blocked or is it a problem my end?
I’m back to the UK soon and want to buy a car and this is not helping me much
Thanks
Autotrater.co.uk up and running again in KL, Malaysia. Hope all other ex-pats are getting access again as this has been a long few weeks for us! Thanks for your efforts.
Hello, any chance we could get this back up for us non EU users. I am trying to look for a car for our son and this is not helping!
Thanks for getting in touch and we appreciate your frustration at this issue.
Over the course of the week we progressively brought online the more significant overseas locations that our site is used from (predominantly Europe and North America). We have continued to open the site up to more overseas traffic since then and we hope to have full global access restored to the site by the weekend.
We do value our non EU based customers and are working hard to restore service on a global basis as quickly as possible. However, international access may be blocked again if we receive further malicious activity from countries outside the UK.
Thank you for your patience and apologies for any inconvenience this has caused.
Thank you all for your comments, we have now updated the original blog post in response and we hope to have full global access restored to the site by the weekend.
Hi,
Cant access the website from Kenya, I get the error (Access Denied
You don’t have permission to access “http://www.autotrader.co.uk/” on this server.)
Any solutions to this?
Thank you.
Mutu.
Coming to UK end May for holiday usually buy car from your site, When will I have access
Download and run expat shield – it’s a proxy server and will allow you to login to autotrader as if you were in the UK – I had the same problems and I can now login OK
No access from Saudi Arabia also. Can we have an update please. I’m flying back next week and need a car.
try downloading expat shield – it’s a great proxy server and might allow you to login to autotrader as if you were in the UK
Friday 29th April and still no access from Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia. Some feedback as to the the issue accessing Autotrader from outside the UK would be welcome!
try downloading expat shield – it’s a great proxy server and might allow you to login to autotrader as if you were in the UK
Over a week now, seems the Autotrader does not care about brits leaving abroad who want to access the site to buy a car for they retuen, no updates, no messages or news, but they will take your money, what a laugh bunch of jokers !!