News and Announcements

**TimSchroeder** · 09-15-2004, 10:44 PM

Webmaster-Talk was hit with a rather large Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack today (there may be more to come).

The attacks at present are from many IPs. We suspect that trojanned PCs are being used in a distributed attack. A word of advise is to put some good anti-spyware software on your machine if you have not already (like Web Root Spy Sweeper).

Thanks for your patience during this time.

**Christopher** · 09-15-2004, 10:51 PM

For those of you who don't already know what a DDoS attack is, it's basically an attack with the goal of bringing down a service. In our case, that service is the WT forums. "Distributed" means that there are many computers involved (usually "zombie machines"), they are all sending requests to the server and the server is getting overwhelmed. As a result, we have a denial of service.

**Zafar Ahmed** · 09-15-2004, 10:59 PM

**** i have to scan all my files to make sure my computer has no viruses.

**Christopher** · 09-15-2004, 11:02 PM

Visiting WT will not increase your chance of having an infected computer and certainly will not magically give you a virus, Tim was just pointing out that you could be a victim of these trojans and become a pawn of any cracker.

I'm not sure if that is what you meant by your message, but I just want to clarify.

**Anacrusis** · 09-15-2004, 11:07 PM

Thanks for the updates guys. This type of thing really gets on my nerves. Now you guys have to take extra time and watch the site in case it happens again in order to stop it. I sympathize.
If there's anything I can do to help,anything at all, let me know.

**praveen** · 09-16-2004, 06:22 AM

******************* hell...

**Zafar Ahmed** · 09-16-2004, 06:47 AM

Tim needs to wake up and look after his site daily

**TimSchroeder** · 09-16-2004, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diesel

Tim needs to wake up and look after his site daily

We Do. There was no way to know a DDOS attack was coming and they are difficult to stop.

**KeithMcL** · 09-16-2004, 12:38 PM

Do you think this DDoS attack orginated from the same person(s) that hacked the forums and sent all that spam?

**TimSchroeder** · 09-16-2004, 12:42 PM

Yes. Or at least probably related somehow.

**theForumCity** · 09-16-2004, 02:00 PM

This is not the only site that has been plagued by Dos Attacks, because OcUK forums were put into turmoil and it was made worse because that site has a lot more members than here (hopefully not for too long

)

**Christopher** · 09-16-2004, 04:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Diesel

Tim needs to wake up and look after his site daily

As Tim said, there is little we can do to prevent, or fight back against DDoS attacks. The best we can do is try small tricks to filter out the attackers requests on the server. I think that we are doing extremely well considering the situation.