Thread: If you had difficulty accessing BroncosForums this morning

Just a quick update. If you had a problem connected to BroncosForums.com this morning, around 8:30 MST and again at 8:40 MST, here is why.

The data center where the BroncosForums.com server is located experienced a DDOS attack on another server located in their data center. The attack was severe enough, that it impacted network traffic to parts of their data center and impacted over other servers, not just the one under attack.

Here is an announcement from there as to what happened.

RT @HIVELOCITY: At roughly 10:30am a portion of our network was adversely affected by a DDOS. The attack has since been mitigated & network back to normal.

Sorry for any inconvenience, and just wanted to give a heads up on what happened.

T

What's a DDOS attack?

Thanks for the heads up. I was pretty pissed about the whole thing. I almost canceled my subscription and demanded a refund.

I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids.

Originally Posted by Nomad

What's a DDOS attack?

A denial of service (DOS) attack. There's a few different ways they can do it, but essentially it's making so many calls/requests/visits to a server that it is overwhelmed.

The DD in DDOS is distributed denial... where they use a bot network or something else to have hundreds or thousands of computers flood a site to overwhelm the server and have it crash or simply unable to respond to all of the requests.

Originally Posted by Tned

A denial of service (DOS) attack. There's a few different ways they can do it, but essentially it's making so many calls/requests/visits to a server that it is overwhelmed.

The DD in DDOS is distributed denial... where they use a bot network or something else to have hundreds or thousands of computers flood a site to overwhelm the server and have it crash or simply unable to respond to all of the requests.

What do hackers get out of doing that kind of shit? I really don't get it.

Originally Posted by Nomad

What's a DDOS attack?

Distributed Denial Of Service attack. In a nutshell, a shitload of computers, normally infected with a Trojan virus, will all hit your website at the same time. The intent is to overload your servers ensuring legitimate traffic can't get through.

We get this time to time on our companies store front web site.

I noticed it while it was happening one time because I went to the log file to research something different and noticed I could not open the log file(was taking a long time anyway) because it had grown so large logging all the requests.

We grab their IP address and block it in the firewall to deal with it.

Because of the latest attack we had I wrote a script that keeps track of when size and line counts of the log file were last updated and what those counts are and every 15 minutes it monitors it and if it grows past a threshold we expect then it send us an email so we can jump in and see why it is growing so fast, and if because of a spam attack we can shut them down a little faster.

I was at work on evening checking emails and I opened an email and got the 'FBI Moneypak Virus'.

Originally Posted by Rick

We get this time to time on our companies store front web site.

I noticed it while it was happening one time because I went to the log file to research something different and noticed I could not open the log file(was taking a long time anyway) because it had grown so large logging all the requests.

We grab their IP address and block it in the firewall to deal with it.

Because of the latest attack we had I wrote a script that keeps track of when size and line counts of the log file were last updated and what those counts are and every 15 minutes it monitors it and if it grows past a threshold we expect then it send us an email so we can jump in and see why it is growing so fast, and if because of a spam attack we can shut them down a little faster.

That works great for a DOS attack that typically come from a single IP range, but a DDOS will come from all over the place making it nearly impossible to get past. You can't block just one IP and it's hard to filter the good from the bad.

I blame the Chinese or perhaps when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.

Originally Posted by Davii

That works great for a DOS attack that typically come from a single IP range, but a DDOS will come from all over the place making it nearly impossible to get past. You can't block just one IP and it's hard to filter the good from the bad.

Very true, and very much a pain in the ass lol.

Luckily the majority of the attacks on our site have all come from single ips or ranges.

Originally Posted by chazoe60

What do hackers get out of doing that kind of shit? I really don't get it.

It varies. Sometimes it's "just because." Sometimes they might try and exact some kind of ransom. In many cases, it might be political. A company (or government agency) might have a position that a hacker or hacking group disagrees with, so they take their site down as retaliation.

Originally Posted by Buff

I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids.

What kind of lame Halloween costume did you use, the old bed sheet that fooled adults into thinking you're a ghost?