Motor insurance database is down

[scorcher]

As per title. Seems every vehicle is coming up as currently uninsured. I’m sure the police and DVSA already know but might cause problems for those that get pulled and can’t prove they are insured at the roadside.

[8bit]

Just checked https://ownvehicle.askmid.com and neither of our cars show as insured - but that could just be a problem with their website rather than the actual database itself. Where did you read/hear this from?

I'd think the bigger net result will be lots of letters generated automatically when drivers pass ANPR cameras.

[mk1coopers]

Just checked a few of mine, none showing as insured, there must be a protocol if everything suddenly shows as uninsured ?

[rab.s]

Rumour has it that the ask-mid database has been hacked and all vehicles are now shown as uninsured.

Checked and all my cars are shown as having no insurance.

Could be an interesting few days for police.

[x5tuu]

surely a roadside stop would be sorted with a producer or providing evidence there/then of coverage - the DB is only a relatively new thing and this was handled manually for a long time before its wide accessibility!

[jfdi]

Yep, just checked one of mine. AskMid running very slow then tells me it's not insured. It is!

[snuffy]

So are mine. Ie showing as not insured.

[AC43]

Looked at one of mine. Saying not insured but it is.

[Petrol Only]

Same

[Super Josh]

Shouldn't take them long to restore yesterday's backup?

[snuffy]

The database could be fine, but the website could be fine; I.e. the front end is not connecting correctly to the back end.

[paradigital]

snuffy said:

The database could be fine, but the website could be fine; I.e. the front end is not connecting correctly to the back end.

If that were true, it’s an even easier fix than recovering from backup. A simple connection string would have been fixed in minutes.

[K87]

I think the real concern is that an important database could have been hacked and has private information been accessed.

[paddy1970]

snuffy said:

The database could be fine, but the website could be fine; I.e. the front end is not connecting correctly to the back end.

What did the website say when it couldn't connect to the database? 'You're really letting me down; I feel like I'm talking to a firewall."

[Alex Z]

The website is crawling. Probably cause everyone is trying to check their cars because of posts like this.

As an IT person, I expect some technical fault has broken the connection to the database rather than anything sinister.

[snuffy]

paddy1970 said:

What did the website say when it couldn't connect to the database? 'You're really letting me down; I feel like I'm talking to a firewall."

Never underestimated levels of stupidly of error handling code. It would not surprise me if some someone had not coded : If dB connection failed or timed out then display "not insured".

[snuffy]

paradigital said:

If that were true, it’s an even easier fix than recovering from backup. A simple connection string would have been fixed in minutes.

Assuming that a) they already know about it and b) they have someone on standby on a Saturday morning to fix it.

The easiest thing is to take the site into maintenance mode so that it just says "this function is currently unavailable".

But by the fact that you can still search means that has not happened.

[eltax91]

Surely surely surely the developers would have coded a ‘connection error’ if the website couldn’t connect to the db?

‘We’re sorry but your request cannot be serviced at this time’ or something. It would be pretty sloppy to have it show not insured for every failed lookup

[snuffy]

paddy1970 said:

What did the website say when it couldn't connect to the database? 'You're really letting me down; I feel like I'm talking to a firewall."

I will have that one for work !

[snuffy]

eltax91 said:

Surely surely surely the developers would have coded a ‘connection error’ if the website couldn’t connect to the db?

‘We’re sorry but your request cannot be serviced at this time’ or something. It would be pretty sloppy to have it show not insured for every failed lookup

You would think so, but you would often be wrong.
I've seen websites display the SQL connection error under such circumstances.