UPDATE (Jan 12, 2018): Spectre and Meltdown

Issue: Spectre and Meltdown
Status:InMotion Hosting is aware of the reports. No services have been affected.
Who is impacted?All computers and devices are theoretically vulnerable.
Estimated time until resolution:Patches from KernelCare are scheduled for application as soon as they become available.

Update: Due to the seriousness of the issue and due to the security implications regarding this, we made the decision to apply the updates to all of our servers. This includes all VPS, Dedicated, Business, and Reseller customers. This required a reboot of each of the servers in order to move to the new patched kernel. The reboots concluded at 7:00 AM EST, and with very few exceptions, all are now patched against the exploit.

What are Spectre and Meltdown

Spectre and Meltdown are CPU exploits that can be used to monitor and intercept private information from a computer’s operating system. This is considered a hardware vulnerability and is thus more difficult to mitigate by software means. However, major vendors are already providing updates for their customers to address the proposed threats.

What happens now?

InMotion Hosting is aware of the issue and working hard to make sure our fleet remains secure as always.

Dedicated Server customers may reference these instructions for information on how they can apply patches and reboot their servers before a live patch release.

CM
Christopher Maiorana Content Writer II

Christopher Maiorana joined the InMotion community team in 2015 and regularly dispenses tips and tricks in the Support Center, Community Q&A, and the InMotion Hosting Blog.

More Articles by Christopher

33 thoughts on “UPDATE (Jan 12, 2018): Spectre and Meltdown

  1. Is this patch causing unexpected system reboots as reported by Intel on Jan 22? Please see below: https://newsroom.intel.com/news/root-cause-of-reboot-issue-identified-updated-guidance-for-customers-and-partners/

     

    I have been noticing that in my reseller plan there are constantly downtimes and service has been very slow from 9:00pm CST to 00:00 since last week, do you have any updates on this?

    1. If you are having specific issues with performance on your server then the best course of action is to contact our live technical support team. They can immediately review your server or contact the systems team in order to alert them of an existing problem. We do not currently have an update since the January 12 announcement.

  2. We recently moved a bunch of web sites over to InMotion from other platforms. Thank you for being proactive in fixing this. Our sites were down for a few hours but within a few minutes of noting that the sites were down we knew why and that you were working on it. Being able to chat with someone live was also very reassuring.

  3. Thank you support for being proactive about this and keeping our sites and data safe.  Much appreciated.  

    In reading the comments above, I understand their frustration of the site being down, but being proactive is better than being reactive in this situation. 

    1. Apologies for any disruption in service. Please contact our live technical support team for immediate assistance with the issue. You can find the contact information at the bottom of this page.

  4. My VPS server still not working! The support don’t know how long it take to solve the problem. Terrible customer service! Server was stopped work from
    Jan 12, 2018 and It’s Jan 14, 20018 (10:19 PM). Very bad!!!!

  5. Been using InMotion VPS services for over a decade. This is just one of the examples why.

    Thanks again.

    Team MediaVice

    www.MediaVice.com

  6. My server just now went down (after a brief outage about 18 hours ago; which I can only assume that was for the Spectre & Meltdown mentioned above). Are you rebooting again??

    1. I am unaware of any reboots that have occurred after the official maintenance over night. I would advise you contact Technical Support to specifically review your account further.

  7. Over here on the So.Cal.coastline cities of Santa Barbara/Montecito/Carpinteria we are busy reacting to a few “events” courtesy of our mutual Mother Nature. 

    Glad to learn you guys got our back in the intertoobs world.

    cheers

     

  8. Your update is incorrect. It is 10:40 Central time and all my sites are still down. I was on a chat with support at 8:45 this morning and they assured me you are “working on it” – but have no idea how long it will take to be fixed. Why on earth would you do this on a Thursday night?? Wouldn’t it have been better to do it over the weekend?

  9. I was very disappointed that you scheduled yesterday’s server updates during business hours for those of us on the West Coast! That seems very inconsiderate and unprofessional to me. As there are no known past exploits of Spectre or Meltdown and no known impending threats, this update could have taken place at night instead of during the business day. I hope you will rethink your timing for future updates and not forget about your customers in the Pacific time zone.

    Regards, David

  10. VPS has been inaccessible for around 11 hours now. E-L-E-V-E-N. After that length of time, one would think it would be decent to have an ETA to provide… but nope. Been on Chat twice now. Appreciate the intent to “stay on top of things” but sorry, Support, I have to give you a thumbs-down on the execution.

     

     

     

  11. Its been over 11hrs since this Spectre and Meltdown server upgrades and nothing from support when they will finish. This is not minimal disruption but a major loss  in revenue and customers for me

  12. My site has been down for at least a half hour and possibly as much as 45 minutes more than that. I’m assuming this has something to do with the Spectre/Meltdown update that was supposed to happen at 7PM EST.

    I tried logging in to the support center, but that also fails.

    How much down time were we supposed to expect? Is there anything that we can do to bring the site back up, or is the update taking longer than expected?

    Any guidance or reassurance (at the very least) would be appreciated.

    Ben

  13. Great job IMH! Thank you for staying a step ahead and being proactive! I know I appreciate your work and dedication to keeping the servers and our sites safe! Cheers

     

    1. The error page that displays during the restart will be the generic 500 error. This restart should not last more than a few minutes.

  14. Hi Support;

    Thanks for your notice of Spectre and Meltdown patches. Your quick action is another reason Inmotion is my hosting choice.

    Best regards,

    Ted

    1. If you have a Dedicated Server hosting plan, then you can contact Our Live Support for further assistance. They should be able to get you to the Advanced Product Support department, where they can review your server and assist accordingly.

  15. Can we expect to see performance losses? Isn’t it speculated that servers could see a performance impact of up to 30% (slower) due to the nature of the patches?

  16. Thanks inMotion support for staying on top of things like this! During the downtime, what message will appear on the landing page of our site? 404 error or something else? Can we put up a temporary “down for mainteneance” landing page during the downtime?

  17. So with respect to dedicated servers and to be clear, if you have a dedicated server and are comfortable with the manual instructions you can patch now but if you don’t, you guys will take care of it when there’s “a live patch release”??

     

  18. This is exactly why I have used inMotion hosting since 2008. They are always on top of things like this. They are always very reliable and secure. 

    Thank you admins at inMotion for taking care of this!

  19. Hello InMotion Support!

    THANK YOU for posting this, and staying on top of things concerning these two issues!

    I see the support article above atates:

    “Dedicated Server customers may reference these instructions for information on how they can apply patches and reboot their servers before a live patch release.”

    Do these update instructions also apply to VPS plans, not just dedicated plans? If I am running a VPS plan, should I follow these updates, or just wait for more info (or a live patch release) from your team?

    Thanks for any/all advice in regards to this!

    Richard

    1. Hello Richard,

      Thanks for your question about VPS accounts. VPS accounts, reseller accounts, and shared server accounts are all directly monitored and managed by our Systems teams. Dedicated server are as well, but they can also be managed and directly controlled based on their configuration (which can vary). The instructions for the dedicated servers only apply to those account types.

      I hope that helps to answer your question! If you require further assistance, please let us know!

    2. Hello Support,

      Thank you again for you time and attention concerning these issues!

      Yes, I understand what you have said about VPS, reseller, and shared hosting plans being managed by your Systems Teams. I had a feeling this was the case – but, I appreciate you confirming this!

      Thanks again for staying on top of this! You guys rock! 🙂

      Regards,
      Richard

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