I merged skillstacker's thread into a similar discussion. I also retitled the thread.
This appears(?) to be related to mingstar's (site owner and server admin) mitigation for DDOS attacks. From his post: Subject: Bogleheads Forum website running VERY slow?
This appears(?) to be related to mingstar's (site owner and server admin) mitigation for DDOS attacks. From his post: Subject: Bogleheads Forum website running VERY slow?
I'll ask him to investigate.Hi folks,
The site is weathering a prolonged distributed denial of service attack (DDOS).
Normally, we keep an eye on individual client hosts that are misbehaving and ban their traffic for a while. This is usually sufficient.
However, when a bad actor has access to hundreds or thousands of hosts, no single host has to exhibit grossly abnormal behavior in order for the aggregate to be overwhelming.
That is the situation we're facing now: there are several origins of attack, just one of which is using hundreds of hosts to assault our server.
I am working on software to improve our ability to respond automatically but separating the wheat from the tares is challenging.
I and some of the other admins are doing it manually but that's not as responsive as an automated detection/response system would be.
Thus, when the attackers shift to a new set of attack hosts, it may take a while before we can adapt our defenses. In a message to the site moderators, one of the admins used an apt analogy saying that it's like playing "Whack A Mole" at Internet scale.
At the moment, I have the walls up in a very aggressive posture and the site is holding its own. The posture may be overly agressive but that's the best I can do for the next little while.
Larry
Statistics: Posted by LadyGeek — Sun Feb 16, 2025 7:38 am