Last night around 7:30 PM eastern time the site came under attack again. In the past when this happened I was able to throw money at the problem and prevent these attacks. The cost of doing that has surpassed my savings at this point. Since the attack last night the site has been up then down, then up again as it is right now. I have no idea how long it will be till the next attack that will shut us down again, or even if there will be another attack. As before when this happened I have no idea why this is happening.
Catching up on unread posts, I'm seeing some funny things happening. Some threads disappearing, then reappearing, posts I read showing back up with nothing new, etc. Might be some residual bugs running around the electrons, Nathan.
When you say you threw money at it last time, you paid someone to eliminate the previous hack, close loopholes, that sort of thing? How exactly are the baddies getting in to cause a problem? was it a denial of service issue again or something else? Can your hosting company help somehow? Can WE help somehow? Some of us are pretty good at this stuff (not me tho) maybe we have some talent that can jump in and assist?
Added a layer of protection from DDOS attacks, but at a cost that tripled hosting costs. Yep and DDOS attack again. A UDP flood with high PPS (packets per second) Imagine thousands of people crushed up against you each needing to shake your hand. you keep moving between them as fast as you can but can't spend time responding to any other requests. They were. I may need to look at new hosting options. Sure, if you know this stuff contact me please. It's a your basic webserver.
I don't understand why they do this, what do hackers gain for themselves by DDOS attacks on a website? I could understand it if it was backed by some big international corporation that someone had a hard on for and wanted to shut down, but us? We're just this fun, friendly little website.....we never hurt anyone......
That is a darn good question. Yes, being a supporting member helps out quite a bit. These attacks take a fair amount of resources to counter. Your supporting membership to M/A helps a lot to keep the scofflaws at bay.