Botnet hammering the forums

[void]

There is a massive botnet hammering the forums.

I have had to restrict access to the forums.

You might see 403 errors when trying to access the forum.

Please let me know if you are having trouble accessing the forums:
https://www.voidtools.com/contact/

Sorry for any inconvenience.

[horst.epp]

No problems, so fare from Germany.
Forum reaction time is fast.

[abr01]

What's wrong with those people?

[void]

9,384,807 requests from 3,121,828 unique IPs in the last 24 hours.

[abr01]

And why this site? Doesn''t make the slightest sense. Jealous competitors?

[therube]

It's not just this site.
Any number of sites I frequent are seeing the same. And they're all have to take some sort of measures to "fix" things>

[void]

botnet activity has stopped.

[void]

botnet activity has resumed.
site was down briefly.

[void]

Botnet activity has stopped.

[null]

why not use flowtrackd?

[void]

I am trying to avoid cloudflare at this stage.
Thanks for the suggestion.

[void]

A large number of bots hitting the forums again since yesterday.

[void]

Botnet activity has stopped.

[void]

Botnet active again.

[void]

Site was down earlier today due to a massive DDoS.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

[therube]

Error 403

Yes I saw it on attempted login just now.

Don't know if I typed my pw correctly, but alt+back, typed it again, & then I was in.

[abr01]

Unbelievable. What's wrong with those people?

[void]

Botnet is getting more aggressive.

I have loosened my blocking rules.
Thanks for letting me know and sorry for any inconvenience.

[NotNull]

I noticed that especially phpBB forums are affected. Others, like Discourse seem fine.
(but I definitely don't visit *all* forums on the Internet ..)

If things get even worse, Discourse might be a way out (there are migration scripts)

[TheBestPessimist]

I will always be happy when I hear there is a slight chance for a forum to move to discourse.

(ex discourse admin and staff in multiple forums)

[ChrisGreaves]

I noticed that especially phpBB forums are affected. ... (there are migration scripts)

I log on to two other phpBBs several times each week. Both have installed Cloudflare; I have no problems with those two phpBB, nor, for that matter, VoidTools.
Cheers, Chris

[therube]

Appears one is more apt to hit 403's if not logged in.

[void]

Please let me know if you are seeing 403 pages.

I am experimenting with Discourse, thank you for the suggestions.

[NotNull]

I log on to two other phpBBs several times each week. Both have installed Cloudflare; I have no problems with those two phpBB, nor, for that matter, VoidTools.

Might be the timezone you're in. The evil-doers might be asleep at those times. Popularity (among those evil-doers) might be a factor too.
I do have regular -- almost daily -- issues with voidtools' forum search and Active Topics (which is basically a forum search too) when not using a Windows machine. But I consider that largely irrelevant as Everything is a Windows application.


One phpBB forum that completely gave up fighting the bots is dostips.com
AutoHotkey has disabled the phpBB search feature when not logged in.

[therube]

Discourse

Any Discourse based, basic (like phpBB) sites out there?

(I tried one yesterday & that didn't work properly in my browser, SeaMonkey.

cloudflare does not work in SeaMonkey.)


https://www.mozillazine.org is phpBB & they went with Anubis.
Pale Moon too, Continued abuse & Repo server now Anubis-protected.

[TheBestPessimist]

Try discourse meta (medium customized)
https://meta.discourse.org/

Or jag lovers (low customized)
https://forums.jag-lovers.com/

https://community.bitwarden.com/
https://forum.obsidian.md/

For any discourse site, although you can use it anonymously, I highly recommend you create an account as you should care about the experience as an active user.
Discourse has trust levels. New account is always at trust levels 0 (unless that was customized) and that is a limited account. Read like 20 min to get to TL 1, for the normal experience

[therube]

(jag.
OK thanks, that's a good example.
Does not work, properly in SeaMonkey. Page loads, but I get no scrollbar. I can load the links I can see, & then I can see the part of the post that is visible, but again no scrollbar to see the remainder of the post.

Ugly looking layout, too [IMO].)

[TheBestPessimist]

> Ugly looking layout, too

Well that's comical because I think the same about all the *BBs. Ugly and unfriendly.

And (unlike you I assume) I grew up with BBs, then moved to discourse, and now I use both.

Maybe it takes a few weeks of getting used to?
{Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/1172/)

Also, jag lovers are a special bunch. They have the _important_ discussions in there, like if emerald green is the better color than olive green and so on. .

[ChrisGreaves]

Might be the timezone you're in

I am in the timezone "80 years old", also known as "wake up at any time and go pee".
Truly, if I wake at 0100 hours and need to pee, i need to be awake in order to navigate this household.
I feel that BBS systems, since I met them in 1984, have been a major benefit in communications, especially on technical matters.
If you emigrated to Moon last week, I really don't care
Cheers, Chris
P.S. I suspect that commercial botnets work 24/7

[NotNull]

P.S. I suspect that commercial botnets work 24/7

I assumed the same, but in the evening (European time) I typically do not have issues; these start around midnight ( on non-Windows devices).

BBS

Yes indeed, a limited amount of phone-lines automatically limited the amount of concurrent users. But probably more relevant: earning money by disturbing online services wasn't "invented" yet.

[void]

Botnet is extra aggressive since yesterday.
Sorry for any down time.

[void]

Botnet extra extra aggressive today.

1200+ requests / second.

[abr01]

The botnet annoyance seems to act very differently, depending on where you are, i guess (Hamburg, in my case). Because i don't recall to have had any 403 here, ever. Or even slow loading times.