DoS attack

aardvaak

I have just heard that a well known website I use a lot has had a [FONT=&quot]"DoS attack"[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Is this fixable?[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Why are these people so evil stopping others enjoyment?[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]Why do it?
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[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]

Guerillatoker

It'll blow over soon, a DDoS attack can only be kept up so long. Its basically just "overloading" the bandwidth of the hosting server by making mass requests. This is usually done automatically by a computer program but eventually the perpetrator will target another site or need to turn of the program to free up their computer's resources.

The website should be able to invest in DDoS protection to avoid it in the future, but I'm not sure how effective that is.

onomatopoeia99

DoS = Denial of Service, it involved firing a lot of requests at the site in an attempt to make it unusable as it can't service all the requests as quickly as they are arriving.

On its own, it's only a problem as it stops other people from getting to the site while it's happening and doesn't need fixing, just waiting for the attacker to move on. If it's combined with something else that attempts to gain unauthorized access, then there may be other problems such as data losses or data breaches, but it's impossible to say from here.

Browntoa

MSE has been subjected to them in the past , normally when they have deleting spam . The old wooden kitchen spammer for example if long established users of the forum remember.

GunJack

Browntoa wrote: »

MSE has been subjected to them in the past , normally when they have deleting spam . The old wooden kitchen spammer for example if long established users of the forum remember.

Ohhh yeah..... they were a regular on here for a while

forgotmyname

I phoned that kitchen company a few times and they didnt like receiving calls to ask why they were posting spam.

They couldnt link receiving calls wasting their time and me reading spam and wasting my time. Not the same thing apparantly.

dividendhero

aardvaak wrote: »

I have just heard that a well known website I use a lot has had a [FONT=&quot]"DoS attack"[/FONT]

you sure they're not just saying that to blame a third party?

forgotmyname

Any reason for that site to have a DoS attack? Or just some dodgy advert lagging the site out?

A few sites have sold space to questionable 3rd parties. I always have to ask WHY...

One site i changed the news email message and my signature to point people into using ad blockers for the site. Only a hanful of users left at that point and the people running it turned it into advert central.

Using NoScript opens your eyes into what websites are doing in the background.

DocQuincy

aardvaak wrote: »

[FONT=&quot]Is this fixable?

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[FONT=&quot]If it's just coming from a single source then it's easy to block them.
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[FONT=&quot]DDoS is harder to fix. The D at the beginning stands for “distributed” so the traffic is not coming from a single easily-identifiable source. If you read section 4 and 5 on here you will see how complex an issue it is:[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack[/FONT]
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[FONT=&quot]For smaller players, you can use something like Cloudflare, which offers DDoS protection through their network.
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aardvaak wrote: »

[FONT=&quot]Why are these people so evil stopping others enjoyment?[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Why do it?[/FONT]

It can be part of so-called hacktivism. E.g. a group from the political left want to take down a right-wing website. Or it can be an attempt to get a ransom from the site they're DDoSing. Or it could just be, as you say, done out of spite (“[FONT=&quot]stopping others enjoyment[/FONT]”).

DoaM

DocQuincy wrote: »

For smaller players, you can use something like Cloudflare

So MSE forums are a smaller player then.

PS - the formatting in your post is horrendous. (Spotted whilst quoting your post). Did you type in Word then copy/paste into the forum?

System

DoaM wrote: »

So MSE forums are a smaller player then.

Yep, it has only 1.8m users. Go look at how many users Reddit has. The /r/funny sub-reddit alone has just short of 19 million subscribers.