Forum Updates and DDoS attack

[Meengla]

Hmmm...

Who could this dirty trick be from?
Well this forum is a bastion of free speech, especially against the genocide in Gaza and the pointless US proxy-war in Ukraine.
Thank you to the admin team for all your hard work to get this site back up and running.

Bolded part.
That was my thought: This forum has a very strong position against the Israeli policies, especially about the ongoing war. I have been saying in the Gaza war thread that Zionists would block any voice which would challenge their narrative. Maybe this forum has not reached the level of activities yet to be targeted by the Zionists but once it does it will be targeted; right now they have too many other fronts to deal with--both online and on the battlefields.
I don't think even Indians would want to shut down this forum as there are many Indian members here coming to present the Indian narrative, whether good or bad narrative, but it is their right.
But of course I am speculating.
Kudos to the admin for doing a great job!

 

[Sharma Ji]

Bolded part.
That was my thought: This forum has a very strong position against the Israeli policies, especially about the ongoing war. I have been saying in the Gaza war thread that Zionists would block any voice which would challenge their narrative. Maybe this forum has not reached the level of activities yet to be targeted by the Zionists but once it does it will be targeted; right now they have too many other fronts to deal with--both online and on the battlefields.
I don't think even Indians would want to shut down this forum as there are many Indian members here coming to present the Indian narrative, whether good or bad narrative, but it is their right.
But of course I am speculating.
Kudos to the admin for doing a great job!

Pak markhors done it

 

[UKBengali]

Bolded part.
That was my thought: This forum has a very strong position against the Israeli policies, especially about the ongoing war. I have been saying in the Gaza war thread that Zionists would block any voice which would challenge their narrative. Maybe this forum has not reached the level of activities yet to be targeted by the Zionists but once it does it will be targeted; right now they have too many other fronts to deal with--both online and on the battlefields.
I don't think even Indians would want to shut down this forum as there are many Indian members here coming to present the Indian narrative, whether good or bad narrative, but it is their right.
But of course I am speculating.
Kudos to the admin for doing a great job!

Zionists are the number 1 suspects as they have the most to lose from this forum.

Remember that the traction on this site is quite large and there are a large number of probable white westerners that lurk here in order to find an alternative to the Zionist-controlled western mainstream media. Those are the demographics that Zionists are desperate to feed their narrative to above all others.

It is not really that complicated or expensive to launch a Dos attack on a website such as this.

Don’t think it will be the Pakistan authorities as this new forum is not overly hostile to them.

 

[PoKeMon]

Bolded part.
That was my thought: This forum has a very strong position against the Israeli policies, especially about the ongoing war. I have been saying in the Gaza war thread that Zionists would block any voice which would challenge their narrative. Maybe this forum has not reached the level of activities yet to be targeted by the Zionists but once it does it will be targeted; right now they have too many other fronts to deal with--both online and on the battlefields.
I don't think even Indians would want to shut down this forum as there are many Indian members here coming to present the Indian narrative, whether good or bad narrative, but it is their right.
But of course I am speculating.
Kudos to the admin for doing a great job!

Why to look outside when most blatant force to shut down dissent has been within Pakistan itself. The kind of attack, and that too persistent, it need big bucks.

This forum has caused no significant pain to India, yet, to get any attention from people who matters. Even erstwhile PDF wasnt even banned, though enough content was available there to rub India wrong way.

 

[VCheng]

Zionists are the number 1 suspects as they have the most to lose from this forum.

Oh puhleez!

Endlessly copy pasting twitter crap and vitriol will never amount to anything effective. Let us keep it real.

This is likely an issue arising from within Pakistan itself, and it will likely be recurring until the issues come to a muk muka in the best Pakistani traditions.

 

[Meengla]

Why to look outside when most blatant force to shut down dissent has been within Pakistan itself. The kind of attack, and that too persistent, it need big bucks.

This forum has caused no significant pain to India, yet, to get any attention from people who matters. Even erstwhile PDF wasnt even banned, though enough content was available there to rub India wrong way.

I have seen far more damaging content against the Pakistani 'Establishment' on the internet then this (new) forum does. This forum is merely pin-prick to the Pakistani Establishment: Pakistan is a country of 220+ million people where still dozens of millions directly or indirectly support the Establishment. The pro-Imran bias in this forum is predominant and they constantly try to lead the viewers that way; I had written a lot about Imran in the previous / old PDF and won't get into that here. Just pointing out.

I have no proof but I am, like @UKBengali , think the forum is being attacked by a foreign entity or a small group of people; some others have said above it doesn't take much to make the Denial of Service attacks these days. If a foreign entity, then the Israelis, aware of the Westerners coming to this forum would be the likely instigators.

As for rubbing India the wrong way, Indian forums are far less tolerant of contrary views.

 

[Mr X]

The attack is on-going. Please don’t mind if you have to see annoying errors of SpeedLimited.

Copy your post before pressing the submit button so that you don’t regret if the data is lost

Browse slowly / 1 click in 10 seconds whenever I turn this feature ON.

 

[Selim_U]

Hello,

Here's what we know so far. On the 15th of July, I upgraded the forum software. Shortly after the upgrade, I noticed numerous broken links throughout the site. I fixed them all, but an hour later, the CPU usage skyrocketed beyond 100%, leading to database errors. I also observed 1,000 faults in the processes, rendering the forum non-functional.

I disabled all plugins and themes, reverting to the stock version of Xenforo, but the CPU performance didn't improve. I was considering potential solutions when I noticed a sudden drop in CPU usage, bringing levels back to normal. The website functioned properly for a while but then exceeded maximum capacity again, becoming dysfunctional without any intervention. I disabled all plugins via the command line since the ACP was unavailable. The site came back online, once more using the stock version.

Users were requesting dark mode and "users activity" feature, so I enabled them, which caused the site to slow down again. I continued to suspect the upgrade, as the site was fine before it.

However, after speaking with the hosting provider, they were certain it was a DDoS attack. Our typical traffic is around 40,000 hits per day, but between the 15th and 16th of July, we had about 11 million hits. This volume is highly unusual for a small site like ours, suggesting bad bots. We installed a captcha, but it didn't help much. A Xenforo developer who works for the company reverted the forum to the older version, fixed everything and advised against upgrading until all plugins are compatible. We were back to the state of a week ago with a functioning website and compatible plugins.

The website worked fine for another 12 hours before the CPU resources were maxed out again. Another experienced Xenforo developer who was helping me all along (Andy) also believes a DDoS attack is causing the issue, rather than a problem with the forum itself.

Originally, I transferred the domain to Cloudflare in December for DDoS protection, but the changeover took longer than expected, leading to numerous user complaints even after four days. With the old PDF shutting down that week, I reverted to the original host for a smoother user transition. Since then, transferring to Cloudflare has been on hold. My current host offers some DDoS protection, but I plan to switch to Cloudflare this week, despite potential user disruptions, as it's beneficial in the long run.

I noticed my tracking tools reported about 500,000 visits from Russia. Also... on the day of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, we saw an increase to 1,200 users from the USA, compared to the usual 200 per day. So, there was natural traffic growth alongside the DDoS attack.

Please bear with us during these challenging times as the forum is fully recovered and we understand the issue. I have temporarily disabled some features and will re-enable them once the attack subsides. I might reintroduce the captcha to reduce unwanted bots until further notice. So I apologise in advance for the inconvenience. Please use the following link to find the latest posts in the meantime, if I keep switching it off in case

What's new

defencepk.com

Thank you for your understanding.

@Mr X @Musings @Waz @Oscar @RescueRanger

Currently unable to access this forum from BD using TOR. Given the current situation, it is extremely dangerous to do any activity on the net, even just reading this forum without anonymity. Can you enable TOR access for BD users only (while still keeping the site safe from DDoS)?

Massive net/communications blackout means only getting aggregate info regarding global reactions/coverage, even what's going on in BD itself, from the BD section here (BD's have been posting about the protests & aggregating info/news from various sources).

@AbuShalehRumi @Afif @Arthur @Avicenna @Bengal71 @bengalcdn @LeonBlack08 @Maira La @Nabil365 @oblivion @Raiden @Al-Zakir @mb444

 

[Mr X]

@Mr X @Musings @Waz @Oscar @RescueRanger

Currently unable to access this forum from BD using TOR. Given the current situation, it is extremely dangerous to do any activity on the net, even just reading this forum without anonymity. Can you enable TOR access for BD users only (while still keeping the site safe from DDoS)?

Massive net/communications blackout means only getting aggregate info regarding global reactions/coverage, even what's going on in BD itself, from the BD section here (BD's have been posting about the protests & aggregating info/news from various sources).

@AbuShalehRumi @Afif @Arthur @Avicenna @Bengal71 @bengalcdn @LeonBlack08 @Maira La @Nabil365 @oblivion @Raiden @Al-Zakir @mb444

I have blacklisted Tor.

I am not going to unblock it until the DDoS attack is completely over. Please use the VPN instead. Some nations are inaccessible from VPN also but you should still be able to access it from many countries

Apologise for the inconvenience

 

[nahtanbob]

Any idea who is behind the DDOS attacks ?

 

[nahtanbob]

Bolded part.
That was my thought: This forum has a very strong position against the Israeli policies, especially about the ongoing war. I have been saying in the Gaza war thread that Zionists would block any voice which would challenge their narrative. Maybe this forum has not reached the level of activities yet to be targeted by the Zionists but once it does it will be targeted; right now they have too many other fronts to deal with--both online and on the battlefields.
I don't think even Indians would want to shut down this forum as there are many Indian members here coming to present the Indian narrative, whether good or bad narrative, but it is their right.
But of course I am speculating.
Kudos to the admin for doing a great job!

I am not ruling out anyone or anything from DDOS attacks.

Seriously wow many visitors are coming here ? You are not even in the top 100 in any country to be targeted.

There is nothing said here that is not being said on social media or elsewhere

 

[Selim_U]

I have blacklisted Tor.

I am not going to unblock it until the DDoS attack is completely over. Please use the VPN instead. Some nations are inaccessible from VPN also but you should still be able to access it from many countries

Apologise for the inconvenience

Always did; TOR inside a VPN tunnel! This was to keep TOR from leaking/being attacked in a way that revealed real IP (which has deadly consequences in BD).

Unfortunately VPN (or even TOR) by itself is not secure enough! VPN too can be compromised, much easier than TOR actually.

 

[Mr X]

Always did; TOR inside a VPN tunnel! This was to keep TOR from leaking/being attacked in a way that revealed real IP (which has deadly consequences in BD).

Unfortunately VPN (or even TOR) by itself is not secure enough! VPN too can be compromised, much easier than TOR actually.

Your location is safe as we are never going to reveal your IP details no matter at what may cost

 

[Selim_U]

Your location is safe as we are never going to reveal your IP details no matter at what may cost

Yes, I don't doubt that you guys wouldn't jeopardize the lives of BD forum members. But this site can be hacked, specifically the database containing user account info, and subsequently user identities discovered.

However, I was specifically talking about VPN tunnels being compromised with MITM/Hole Punching attacks, by intel orgs. of BD Govt. itself. Being inside a TOR relay, which itself would be inside a VPN tunnel would mitigate attacks (& failure) on either type of connections (as TOR can also be compromised, easiest is relay or exit node poisoning).

 

[Viet]

Any idea who is behind the DDOS attacks ?

If you can answer this question “who has to gain?” then you find out who is behind this DoS attack. My guess is it’s commercial e.i. money driven, motivated. The internet is flooded with fake news, fake forums, cheap propaganda, pro Israeli, anti Israeli propaganda, etc. if just political motivated then hopeless to go against all of them.