- A service outage for Ellie Mae's (NYSE:ELLI -6.3%) cloud-based mortgage origination software led shares to tumble below $27 today.
- Ellie says the outage appears to be due to "an external malicious attack characteristic of a distributed denial of service (DDoS)," and that it has "taken actions to isolate the suspicious activity and prevent future unwarranted access." The company adds there are no signs of a data breach.
- With Ellie's software responsible for processing 20% of U.S. mortgage originations, the outage has had major ripple effects. Lenders have been prevented from closing loans and pulling up credit reports, among other things. "Our business is at a standstill," says a USA Mortgage loan officer.