Forum Updates and DDoS attack

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mr X
  • Start date Start date
Thanks for the update, are there still some changes to put in?

Regards
 
Mr X said:
I don’t want to speculate but it could be anyone. There are too many possibilities to mention such as a user not happy with the forum or got banned and trying to take a revenge to the conspiracy theory of involvement of CIA, RAW or Mossad or individuals from rival forums hiring professionals to do this activity.
Click to expand...
Most likely, it's revengeful maniacs from ISI or auto-bots scraping data for AI training. You know, you are sitting on a gold-mine of user-generated data right ?.

Western AI scrapers copy data silently, they will never bring down a forum. This crude scraping work is either of Chinese or some un-skilled startup.
 
Last edited:
arjunk said:
Most likely some IT Cell/Scam center in Noida pooled together their family's collective savings to pay some russians for a DDOS attack
Click to expand...
Think beyond the box. They do not need to hire, they have such IT talent that can do themselves.

RAW/Mossad/Mi6/CIA do not go after small fish like PDF or Arshad Sharif in Kenya, that cheapness is exclusive to Pakistani or Saudi intelligence apparatus.
 
Last edited:
Expect disruptions for 2 more days

1) I took 3 days off from work because of the website and got pending tasks to do

2) I need to sleep

3) I have taken all the preventive measures, I know and advised by other developers in order to minimize DDoS.

4) All the pending tasks since the launch of this forum were completed which I really wanted to do in December including moving ........ to cloudflare and ....... and ...... and .......

Hopefully after two days. The site will be back to normal
 
Mr X said:
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 defencepk.com

Thank you for your understanding.
Click to expand...
AjayGhatak said:
Do ask your host to block any and all connection requests other than those from cloudflare ip range after you complete the domain transfer to cloudflare... there are sites that keep a record of past dns responses that can be used to bypass cloudflare.
Click to expand...

Seems like someone is using the new plugin and backdoor this attack.

This is most likely coming from a member or someone who know the website is being upgrade. You probably know about this tho
 
Indos said:
Ddos can be stoped right by making a protection sofware to detect human or not human visitors ?

I see Arab Defense Forum use it
Click to expand...

You can't actually stop them this way (By the way, adding captcha is one of the way to sieve out human and bot)

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
 
j_hungary said:
You can't actually stop them this way (By the way, adding captcha is one of the way to sieve out human and bot)

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Click to expand...

I know, it was on for few hours but right now the forum could be down once more for the reasons mentioned in the private message earlier. Let me still turn the captcha On
 
Mr X said:
Someone with deep pockets

It’s not that cheap to do the ddos of this scale.
Click to expand...
damn, I cant imagine who would

there's a fair few of us tricolor flag-bearers here

fighting fair
 
and there's enough infighting among the Indians themselves..hmm

it could be guru dutt
 
Mr X said:
I know, it was on for few hours but right now the forum could be down once more for the reasons mentioned in the private message earlier. Let me still turn the captcha On
Click to expand...
Yeah, don't worry, take you time.
 
I should preferably turn the board off for 1 hour but I am not doing it.

The site could be down when the server transfer is complete that is not helping me to sleep (5am in London)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)

Pakistan Defence Latest

Country Watch Latest

Latest Posts

Share this page

Back
Top