Hungry Onion was under Denial of Service (DDOS) attack today

Site Discussions
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All,

Hungry Onion was under Denial of Service (DDOS) attack today starting at approximately 4:30pm pacific time. Our service is now restored. But we do need help. If you have expertise around DDOS mitigation and prevention, and also tracing the source of DDOS attacks, can you please reply here or send a email to hungryonion1@gmail.com?

Thanks!

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Not an expert but I would consider putting the site behind cloudflare if it isn’t already.

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I second this.

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It’s surreal that a non profit food forum get targeted.

A DDOS attack is A Distributed Denial of service, in short it is an attack meant to shut down a machine or network, making it inaccessible to its intended users . DoS attacks accomplish this by flooding the target with traffic, or sending it information that triggers a crash.

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Because the timing doesnt make that fishy at all.:thinking:

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Is it possible it wasn’t an attack, but just a result of a big surge in traffic? I also see that the blue circle new post indicator on my avatar has vanished.

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Does the blue notification show today? Saturday and sunday there were times the site was slow, I was thinking it was a problem of my own wifi network.

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This happened a couple weeks ago to a vintage appliance forum I am a member of. I don’t think HO was a specific target and I don’t think the appliance forum was either. I will say the other forum was able to trace the attack back to an IP address in Russia. I think someone is just flooding networks and it takes the weakest ones down.

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I sensed the slowing down of the site around 11am - 12pm CET yesterday, meaning 6-7 am EST, it was very early to be overloaded with traffic and on a Sunday morning.

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It’s there now. It wasn’t there a half hour ago.

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I see. I think @Silvblu1’s explanation makes sense.

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I bet this was a ton of time and stress for @sck and some or all of the mods. Thanks again for all you do (even if I’m wrong and it wasn’t)!!

I too think @Silvblu1’s explanation makes sense.

I will ask around my contacts for someone who has interests in both network security and food. :slight_smile:

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Amazon posted this

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Sometimes Cloudflare gives trouble when behind a VPN or proxy. I’m sure the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, however.

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I haven’t caught up on the discussion, so apologies if this is redundant - my web-developer DH says, “They need to use a service like akamai or cloudflare or fastly.”

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Not being a tech guy at all, I suggested the same thing to Sampson via PM today. I don’t know anything about this stuff, but I know in my profession we have been receiving warnings for weeks, from just about every regulatory agency to be prepared for cyber-attacks. Specifically on networks and or cloud services. All the warnings specified there are NO specific targets / threats making it seem they were just throwing as much cyber sh*t against the wall to see what sticks.

That was my gut instinct after reading about this attack this morning.

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Same. People keep telling me to change all my passwords, and that this stuff is related to the current crisis in Ukraine.

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Tell me about it! I just changed all my passwords to PutinSucksTheBIg1 to make sure I’m extra secure! Stoopid hacker’s ain’t going to get me!!!

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Irregardless of where this interruption came from, protecting the protocols is the only defense. Thanks in advance for the time spent.

Including, Amazon third-party sellers, Optimum’s remote control app and two internet radio stations that I’m aware of.

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Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s not who you might have been thinking. What would it serve them to do so? But as noted by @Silvblu1, it’s probably just hackers looking to take down a site and hold it for potential ransom.