Wikipediocracy

Thanks for getting things sorted in the fetid basement, you beloved traveling circus freaks!

What happened? DDoS - hmmmmm?

Yeah, glad to see the forum back. Speculation elsewhere seems to be a DDOS attack from rabid Hindutvaists (Is that a word? It ought to be.) Probably wrong though...

I thought we'd been reasonably fair to the Hindus...?

Anyway, this has been kind of nightmarish, I don't mind saying. I posted an explanation here - I'd prefer we also discussed the situation there too, though I guess we'll keep this thread up for a little while.

I thought the "fetid basement" was where Mr Kohs lives, and he's not running things here any more.

Poetlister wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:09 pm

I thought the "fetid basement" was where Mr Kohs lives, and he's not running things here any more.

Thank you for your contribution, Mr HyperLiteralJokeKiller.

It's always a pleasure to help!

Incidentally, the site seems to be responding pretty slowly at present. Is that due to all the bots? (There seem to be 720 at present.)

Poetlister wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 11, 2020 8:36 pm

Incidentally, the site seems to be responding pretty slowly at present. Is that due to all the bots? (There seem to be 720 at present.)

Well, that, and the fact that the board is creating new session records for them on each visit. I'll check to see how many in a little bit... Maybe I can "weed" that table more selectively from here on out, and then run it every few days as a "cron job."

So much for "semi-retirement" from the IT industry...

Also, I've just blocked a fairly large IP range from "Huawei Mobile Clouds," which will prevent lots of people using smartphones in China and Singapore from viewing the site completely. That's where most of the Chinese bots have been coming from.

I guess that tends to suggest that this isn't some sort of revenge against us specifically, since we don't really know anybody in China or Singapore who would want to do something like this - my guess is that some app-developer or something just screwed up somewhere, and they happened to be using Huawei Mobile Clouds when they were doing it.

Midsize Jake wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 11, 2020 9:05 pm

I guess that tends to suggest that this isn't some sort of revenge against us specifically, since we don't really know anybody in China or Singapore who would want to do something like this

Kudpung is located in Thailand

Nice that the gang has reassembled.

Midsize Jake wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 11, 2020 9:05 pm

Also, I've just blocked a fairly large IP range from "Huawei Mobile Clouds," which will prevent lots of people using smartphones in China and Singapore from viewing the site completely. That's where most of the Chinese bots have been coming from.

Seems to have worked — our guest counts are back to normal.

I should have figured this out a lot earlier (i.e., the counts started rising a few weeks ago, it just wasn't a huge number like we saw over the weekend). So I apologize for that.

Also, this is my first range-block, so I can no longer say I've never had to impose one before. Oh well!

Can this site survive without all our thousands of contributors from China and Singapore? Of course, if this were an attack aimed at us, anyone able to design such an attack presumably knows how to spoof an IP address.

Poetlister wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 12, 2020 9:21 am

Can this site survive without all our thousands of contributors from China and Singapore? Of course, if this were an attack aimed at us, anyone able to design such an attack presumably knows how to spoof an IP address.

These days, I think the cool kids just outsource the denial of service attacks to someone with a botnet.

Giraffe Stapler wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 12, 2020 4:14 pm

These days, I think the cool kids just outsource the denial of service attacks to someone with a botnet.

True, and a lot of the botnets that have appeared in the last couple of years — including some that appeared almost overnight by exploiting poorly-secured Huawei routers — are IoT (Internet of Things) botnets, meaning they're running via light bulbs, smart-plugs, and programmable thermostats, among other devices. Even if those things had some sort of interface to check, 99.999% people would never bother to monitor them for unusual web activity.

Anyway, I guess my (somewhat-dubious) logic here is that the longer we go without a recurrence of all that bot activity, the more reassured we can be that this wasn't directed specifically at us. But it does look like all these IoT "internet appliances" now make it possible to quickly set up botnets with, say, 15-20,000 nodes, whereas in the past the same amount of effort might have yielded only a few dozen nodes, maybe a couple hundred at most. That's going to be a problem for everybody, at least potentially.

Among the many reasons I have exactly 0 IoT devices in my home. This opinion is shared by many of my colleagues.

Fucking right.

As a guy who's done pentesting and prodsec, assume all of your electronics are made.
All of them.

Zoloft wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 13, 2020 6:41 pm

Among the many reasons I have exactly 0 IoT devices in my home. This opinion is shared by many of my colleagues.

Same here. I see very little advantage amid all the hype, and there are clearly a few downsides.

I thought about getting one of those fancy wi-fi long-distance sex toys, but I don't even want to think about what these botnet operators would do if they got control of a whole bunch of those.

Midsize Jake wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 13, 2020 10:34 pm

I thought about getting one of those fancy wi-fi long-distance sex toys, but I don't even want to think about what these botnet operators would do if they got control of a whole bunch of those.

wat?

Midsize Jake wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 13, 2020 10:34 pm

I thought about getting one of those fancy wi-fi long-distance sex toys, but I don't even want to think about what these botnet operators would do if they got control of a whole bunch of those.

Hmm, you're in danger of bewildering the innocents on the site who have no idea about sex.