Apple

Accessing Apple from Australia

All I was trying to do was update my iPhone and iPad to 7.1, but I kept getting a server unavailable message. A ping to apple.com returned Communication prohibited by filter then the penny dropped someone at an ISP in the states was blackholing traffic to Apple.

Update (12:09 AM) There has been a suggestion that this is the result of DNS attack affecting some Apple domains (http://www.macnn.com/articles/14/03/12/fault.is.likely.due.to.hacker.attack.rather.than.apple.originated.issue/) which would have many of the same symptoms as being blackholed on the way to a legitimate location. The attackers were at least clever enough to make sure that the reverse address had something Apple related in it and at least in the case of the addresses I looked at addresses owned by Apple. Read More...