OMG where'd MLPforums go?!

[Batbrony 16,055]

THE SITE IS UNDER ATTACK!?!?! BRONIES AND PEGASISTERS, TO ARMS!!!

 

 

LOL, JK, I already heard how the host website was the real server under attack! Freaked me out last night when I tried to get on right before bed! Great job to Feld0 and the rest of the mods at getting the site back up and running! Still, can't help but think that an army of bronies and pegasisters would be freakin' epic!!!

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,527]

Wow that's crazy Flare - thanks for the info... should we all change our emails now? I'm assuming that's what the hacker(s) were after?

 

 

NOT trying to cause a huge panic!!! Just asking.

 

A DDoS attack is an attempt to put the site offline, not an attempt to gain access to anything. All of the data MLP Forums holds remains untouched and unaffected by this attack.

 

Actually, aren't things like this a sign that the community is doing well and getting famous?

 

That's what I like to think of it as. A coming-of-age sign.

 

mlpforums is under attack?!?!!?

 

 

 

I wish I had known there was a twitter before so I didn't spend so much time thinking there was something wrong with my terrible internet connection lol

 

There's a huge "Follow @MLPForums" button at the top of every page. I put it there with the expectation people would click it.

 

Why would anyone DDOS this forum? I would think Equestriadaily, ponychan or ponibooru would be better targets than this forum.

 

It would be virtually impossible to take Equestria Daily down, because they use Blogger. Blogger is an infinitely scalable SaaS service provided by Google, so DDoS'ing Equestria Daily would mean DDoS'ing the entire Blogger network.

 

As for Ponychan and Ponibooru, I wouldn't be surprised if they've been DDoS'd before.

 

To answer both your immediate question and the obvious one of WHY?

 

The Denial of Service attack was directed against one of the sites in the network MLPForums is connected to.

This is why it is called a Distributed DoS, because the attack is distributed across everything in the network. Every single site that CleverKite Cloud hosts went down. This includes us.

 

The attackers might have targeted a different website completely, but because we're on the same network, we went down too.

So don't raise passions about some hater out there who may not even have wanted us to go down. The best we can do is sit tight and wait. I suspect that even CleverKite don't yet know who did it, or even what website the attack was aimed at.

 

You got that wrong, Raptor_a22. A distributed denial-of-service attack means that the attack itself was distributed among many sources (ie. our server was attacked by many different computers all at once). This is done to create an attack of far greater magnitude than is possible with a single Internet connection.

 

The attack was, however, large enough to saturate our hosting company's pipes and take their entire network offline until they nullrouted our IP.

[Jokuc 8,174]

There's a huge "Follow @MLPForums" button at the top of every page. I put it there with the expectation people would click it.

 

lol I was just about to say that untill I saw your comment Edited April 28, 2012 by Jokuc

[Nas 2,873]

That attack was kinda unnerving. Like Feld0 said, I just hope it's a sign of nothing but a good sign of popularity. >v<

 

In all honesty, I'm glad that everything including privacy-related items remain safe, as they should be. I assume a network such as the one that this forum runs on should be safe and ready for the next one that appears, not knowing much about it, wondering how they get it back up.

 

Kudos, though, for getting it back up in such short time (the word "attack" gives feelings of a 2-3 day timespan for me)!

[AppleShy Sparkle 312]

Aaah, you just gotta love how the admins here always take the time to explain things like this. Thanks for the clarifications, Feld0!

[Fox 5,330]

Just had to wait it out.

[KakeiTheWolf 652]

Well, DDoS attacks never really work for very long, anyway. Either the attacker gets bored, runs out of resources, or the server enables a failsafe. Usually, sites are only down for an hour or so.

[Titan Rising 2,156]

lol the problem is I don't actually have a twitter account so I just subconsciously ignored it. Usually if I want to see tweets about something I just type the twitter account into the address bar

[KakeiTheWolf 652]

<- Knows a crapload about cyber stuff

<- Doesn't use social networking

[PixiGlow 36]

<- Knows a crapload about cyber stuff

<- Doesn't use social networking

 

I'm assuming that the 2nd is because of the first? lol

 

I don't do twitter and I hardly ever log on facebook but i added mlpforums on there, just in case... well i "liked" it - i didn't check if there was an actual group for us or just a fanpage?

[Akemi Homura 7,680]

All of the data MLP Forums holds remains untouched and unaffected by this attack.

 

Tell that to my account; remember how damaged it became and you had to repair it? :/

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

It was me.

 

I told Chinese hacker group this site was farming money in WoW and therefore trying to run them out of business of spamming every Blizzard server for great justice.

One Farmer took it seriously and contacted NSA who immediately saw it as a breach to the national security.

(Having mistaken the word MLP for WMD)

Since the NSA was overworked at the moment, one of the executives cast a summoning and had Great Cthulhu's servants contact Illuminati on their behalf.

(Of course, one of the lesser demons misheard it was a TNMT and that kinda flipped Mr. Dreamer over since it infringes on His Scaliness to have other green things besides Him running around.)

So, of course Illuminati was more than happy to DDOS a Followers of the New Dawn (they got a little too close with that last Scrying.) site on behalf of His Drowsiness.

(You know how it is with tentacles getting in the way of the speaking.)

 

So here we are.

What I'm wondering about is how did the site URL not get garbled up?

You'd think that would be the first thing to lose context.

 

*that_true_story_jaypeg_i_was_too_lazy__to_google.gif*

[KakeiTheWolf 652]

...

 

*facehoof*

[Bow Heart 84]

It was me.

 

I told Chinese hacker group this site was farming money in WoW and therefore trying to run them out of business of spamming every Blizzard server for great justice.

One Farmer took it seriously and contacted NSA who immediately saw it as a breach to the national security.

(Having mistaken the word MLP for WMD)

Since the NSA was overworked at the moment, one of the executives cast a summoning and had Great Cthulhu's servants contact Illuminati on their behalf.

(Of course, one of the lesser demons misheard it was a TNMT and that kinda flipped Mr. Dreamer over since it infringes on His Scaliness to have other green things besides Him running around.)

So, of course Illuminati was more than happy to DDOS a Followers of the New Dawn (they got a little too close with that last Scrying.) site on behalf of His Drowsiness.

(You know how it is with tentacles getting in the way of the speaking.)

 

So here we are.

What I'm wondering about is how did the site URL not get garbled up?

You'd think that would be the first thing to lose context.

 

*that_true_story_jaypeg_i_was_too_lazy__to_google.gif*

 

Uh....

1. What the buck did I just read.

and 2. Usually these kinds of attacks or whatever only last a few hours. It's happened on a few other sites that I get on regularly before, but usually they either end or are corrected

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

Uh....

1. What the buck did I just read.

and 2. Usually these kinds of attacks or whatever only last a few hours. It's happened on a few other sites that I get on regularly before, but usually they either end or are corrected

 

1: The true account why MLForums was DDOS'ed.

Also known as creative impulse story I made up, but it's not as fun to say it's that so instead I lied about what it is.

Beware the Illuminati, they are DDOSing everyone out there.

 

2: I hear apple will taste great this season, but there is not a single reason not to tell you that other than to increment my post count by answering to questions never asked.

So, have a apple this season, I hear they are great.

 

/post

[Bow Heart 84]

1: The true account why MLForums was DDOS'ed.

Also known as creative impulse story I made up, but it's not as fun to say it's that so instead I lied about what it is.

Beware the Illuminati, they are DDOSing everyone out there.

 

2: I hear apple will taste great this season, but there is not a single reason not to tell you that other than to increment my post count by answering to questions never asked.

So, have a apple this season, I hear they are great.

 

/post

 

1. Ah. Okay XD Very nice creative-ness you have then :3

2. Can't eat apples, I'm allergic to apple juice so I just stay away from them in general. Unless they're covered in caramel *u*

[Akemi Homura 7,680]

Feld0 launched the DDoS.

 

/thread

Edited April 28, 2012 by Devin McCourty

[Typhoid Libby 1,265]

Feld0 launched the DDoS.

 

/thread

 

Feld0 is Devin.

Devin is Feld0.

o_0

 

/thread/thread

[Raptor_a22 83]

well, I failed rather embarrasingly there

 

[Doctor XFizzle 8,669]

[Radiance64 7,053]

Oh, that's why I couldn't get on last night. Glad to see everything's ok again now, hope it doesn't happen again.

[SBaby 660]

It was a DDOS against Invision itself. It had nothing to do with this particular site. They were all down for awhile (I go to five or six Invision boards per day, and it happened to all of them). There seem to still be people using that satellite thing on us (I'm getting a bit of interference), but it at least seems to be winding down, and should hopefully stop soon.

 

Short version, I don't think there's anything for us to worry about regarding this.

Edited April 28, 2012 by SBaby

[3005 332]

It was a DDOS against Invision itself. It had nothing to do with this particular site. They were all down for awhile (I go to five or six Invision boards per day, and it happened to all of them). There seem to still be people using that satellite thing on us (I'm getting a bit of interference), but it at least seems to be winding down.

 

Short version, I don't think there's anything for us to worry about regarding this.

 

That makes sense; this is one of the more active Invision sites on the web. That's actually how I found it. ;P I was searching for active forums using the software.

[Whiteshade 1,426]

Glad to see the site back up, now to make up for post count by speedposting

[Twilight Sparkle ✨ 8,527]

It was a DDOS against Invision itself. It had nothing to do with this particular site. They were all down for awhile (I go to five or six Invision boards per day, and it happened to all of them). There seem to still be people using that satellite thing on us (I'm getting a bit of interference), but it at least seems to be winding down, and should hopefully stop soon.

 

Short version, I don't think there's anything for us to worry about regarding this.

 

IPS has nothing to do with this. I host MLP Forums on my own server, which I rent from another hosting company.