CPAPtalk.com

Interesting that it may not have been a true "denial of service" attack. It was the same general idea, though.

That is, flood the site with garbage to make it useless. The distinction seems to be one was still able to get on, make legitimate postings, and wade through the garbage to find the legitimate content. I guess a true DOS attack means that there is so much traffic that it would not be possible to get to the site at all, or some much content that the server itself would crash.

I posted earlier during the bulk of the mess that I was wondering if this was part of a two prong approach. One set of bots flooding the site with spam posts and then another set of bots just accessing the page over and over and over etc... I noticed when I was trying to delete spam posts for example it seamed to go slower and slower like there was a delay. The site was struggling under the load to refresh and get me back to the main page so I could access and delete the next spam posting. That could have been due to the massive influx of worthless posts that were coming in fast and furious or because of a DOS as well.

After thinking about it a bit longer my suspicion is that given the insane volume of posts and how frequent they were coming in. It was most likely way beyond the design of the site as it stands now. The site was never designed to handle that sort of traffic. I don't think any Forum posting site would handle that sort of volume under any circumstances so that in and of it self was likely why the servers were grinding to an almost halt under the strain of the traffic. I think given the number of posts per min we were seeing and the content of those posts being above average in size. I'm actually quite impressed that the site was able to handle it all and keep going.

In a way it was exactly like a DOS but not in the classic sense. Most proper thought out DOS attacks happen on the back end and the users of the site never know until they see problems with long load times (lots of lag) and eventually the site goes down under the strain of keeping up with the fake requests. In this case the outcome was about the same it was just very visual for us. Instead of simply accessing the site over and over "refreshing the pages" or doing bogus searches for content the attackers were simply flooding the server with spam messages.

I see why a lot of users thought DOS right off the bat. Same outcome really. The site was rendered practically useless under the load of bogus traffic. I'm glad to see that things were cleaned up and hope we don't see any further attacks of this type again.

My hats off to our hosts and all the hard work they put in to keeping this site running.

It still could have been a DOS--probably vengeance by someone who has a bone to pick.

chunkyfrog wrote:It still could have been a DOS--probably vengeance by someone who has a bone to pick.

Just so it wasn't a Frog Leg! Jim

I think the forum looks fine to me, I've kicked out a few of the little buggers using the spam button, the on line chat looks a bit strange and could possibly use some work

Odd the only spam I saw this AM was from a Guest. Makes me think someone has an axe to grind about Guest posting and a Spam button. Because of the timing I think it was done manually.

It takes all kinds to make the internet what it is.

More Asian span just now, I deleted them all. Hope they don't take hold of the forum again. The name was Argone, message was Asian.. don't know which language
Nan

Does all of this mean you're not activating new registrations? I tried registering last night and still haven't received activation. Then it says to contact a board administrator, but I can't find out who that is without being able to login. I didn't even realize guest posting was a thing.

Fed my DOGs about 3 pages of SPAM betweem 12:15 and 12:45 pm same crap as before logged in trash. Jim

The little bugger isn't even trying at this point. It's the same sentence copy pasted like a millon times in each post. I don't even have to understand it to know it's crap.

New account posting all the new spam is "Mhineko026"

Hope it doesn't continue. I deleted a bunch more.

Take care everyone!

Gryphon

There was another acct, but I just deleted the posts, It was in the time frame I posted. The accts were made after our cure 6-9:6-10-17. Jim

My dogs had bloting from all the sPAM they ate.

Still feeding my dogs, same log-in foreign crap as the other nite.

They are back!! Mhineko026 is posting spam .

Bill44133 wrote:They are back!! Mhineko026 is posting spam .

He joined June 9....after the new security was put into place.
New member requests all have to go to the admin and be okayed manually...so that one got past the defenses somehow.
Over 180 posts since June 9...and all have been removed including those tonight and I zapped 2...
I messaged Carolyn about it and when she gets in to work tomorrow she will block him permanently. So for now just keep spam removing them and make sure to let Carolyn know that it was a registered member so and so (I usually provide a link to the member profile) is spamming.

I do know that they (IT and Carolyn) are still in the process of trying to sort out various security options to keep this sort of crap away from the forum and not cause problems for legit members while doing it.

I don't know what is being considered for non registered spam prevention and I know I have seen some because I have removed it and I know that some of you other members have also removed non registered member spam.
That's going to be a hard one to block unless Johnny limits posting to only logged in members and I think that so far he doesn't want to do that.

I tried several times to register and was told each time that my response to the 'catch" letters was incorrect. I even had my 17 year old expert input the data and it was still kicked out.