Any one finding the site slow

[arnoldb]

The service provider is still under DDoS attack - not much that we can do about it, but ride things out:

There has been the following update to ticket number 755102:

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Hi Arnold,

We are currently seeing a large amount of attempted connections to drupal based sites. This appears to be an attempt to brute force these sites, Our system administrators are currently looking at ways to restrict this however unfortunately due to the large variety of IP addresses that this is coming from this appears to be a virus based attack coming from infected computers all around the world making it difficult to pin down and restrict the access. Whilst we can assure our customers that our servers themselves are secure against compromise individual sites running outdated scripts may be at risk and we would strongly recommend ensuring that these are updated.

This is also unfortunately resulting in a high load on our servers that is causing some slowdown on other customer sites and for this we apologies and would like to assure you we will have service return to normal as soon as possible.

Regards

Luke

MEM doesn't use drupal, but we unfortunately fall in the "other customer sites" range... 

Kind regards, Arnold

[Stuart]

Thanks for the update Arnold


Stuart

[Stilldrillin]

How similar are we, to Modder?

They had the same problems a few months ago. But, not now....... 

David D

[AdeV]

How similar are we, to Modder?

They had the same problems a few months ago. But, not now....... 

David D

Same software, different host - different host country as well; MEM is hosted in the UK, MM in the USA.

These sorts of attacks will not go away, unfortunately, until it becomes much more difficult to infect Windows machines with viruses that carry out these attacks. Whilst MEM is not the target (Drupal sites were, in this case), the massive bandwidth use screws up everyone else on the same servers, or with the same host.

Irritatingly, all we can really do is grit our teeth and wait for the storm to pass.

[Stilldrillin]

Thanks Ade.... And Arnold, earlier.

I've just Googled "DDoS", (because I know nowt about such things).

Realising, at last. It is a malicious attack. It leaves me wondering....... Why? 

It's a funny old world, out there......   

David D

[Stuart]

David

It will not be aimed at our sites we are not big enough

They do it because they can as Ade said its because win doze is not secure to infection by virus people will not use a good virus program and I do not mean the junk that pc world sell Norton is the one it NBG

You need one that you pay a subscription for to enable it to be up to date

The virus problem is why I do not use any Microsoft software here at all

All my Os are Unix based and are not able to be infected by the nature of the system

Stuart

[arnoldb]

Irritatingly, all we can really do is grit our teeth and wait for the storm to pass.

Yes.

Besides the known problems at our hosting provider, here's some further news which can account for more unexplained issues: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/13/512k_invited_us_out_to_play/
I support some "software systems" at a couple of local telco's, and while on-site at one telco yesterday morning, I noticed anomalies for the past week on their international Internet links.  That led to a thorough systems check, and the anomalies were not "local" - so I searched for the most likely "international" cause...  Sorry, can't be more detailed about this; I don't want to have to kill fellow MEMbers 

Some fairly big telecommunications companies were/are affected by this - but the details are sketchy; none of them will readily admit to getting caught with their pants down - wonder why  (None of our Namibian telco's though; they all installed brand new kit in the last two years to connect to the WACS undersea cable)

David, yes, some do it just because they can, others to intentionally sabotage systems, a lot to try to hack into systems and steal information usernames/passwords/personal details to use criminally or sell on to unscrupulous marketing departments - the list goes on.  The Internet is not a very friendly place behind the scenes.

A word of caution - don't think it's only Windows that is vulnerable and can be exploited...  There have been reports of viruses for Android (which is Linux based), and many Linux/Unix based systems connected to the Internet get breached each year when vulnerabilities in older software on them get exploited.  Once these systems can be controlled by hackers, they also get used in attacks.  So keep those firewalls on, use different passwords for sites where you have login accounts, and don't just click on any link you see in emails or on web pages. 

Kind regards, Arnold

[BaronJ]

David

The virus problem is why I do not use any Microsoft software here at all

All my Os are Unix based and are not able to be infected by the nature of the system

Stuart

Hi David,  Guys,
Its not just the virus problem !  I dumped all Microshaft when W95 came out.  It was the first OS that knew how to phone home.  It was weeks before I discovered that it used the modem and telephone line in the early hours of the morning.  In those days I used the computer as a fax machine so it was left switched on 24/7.  I would have to log back in or re-boot when I came to the machine 1st thing in the morning.


So I now use only Open Source Software and operating systems.

[AdeV]

David

The virus problem is why I do not use any Microsoft software here at all

All my Os are Unix based and are not able to be infected by the nature of the system

Stuart

Hi David,  Guys,
Its not just the virus problem !  I dumped all Microshaft when W95 came out.  It was the first OS that knew how to phone home.  It was weeks before I discovered that it used the modem and telephone line in the early hours of the morning.  In those days I used the computer as a fax machine so it was left switched on 24/7.  I would have to log back in or re-boot when I came to the machine 1st thing in the morning.


So I now use only Open Source Software and operating systems.

Sadly, Open Source is no guarantee of invulnerability - see the recent "Heartbleed" bug in OpenSSL (that's Secure Sockets - or, if you're not a computer techie - that's a secure way of two machines communicating, except it turned out to be not so secure after all).

That said - I've gone 100% Linux at home. Still Windoze at work, it'll probably stay that way until I quit and go machining full time...

[BaronJ]

David

The virus problem is why I do not use any Microsoft software here at all

All my Os are Unix based and are not able to be infected by the nature of the system

Stuart

Hi David,  Guys,
Its not just the virus problem !  I dumped all Microshaft when W95 came out.  It was the first OS that knew how to phone home.  It was weeks before I discovered that it used the modem and telephone line in the early hours of the morning.  In those days I used the computer as a fax machine so it was left switched on 24/7.  I would have to log back in or re-boot when I came to the machine 1st thing in the morning.


So I now use only Open Source Software and operating systems.

Sadly, Open Source is no guarantee of invulnerability - see the recent "Heartbleed" bug in OpenSSL (that's Secure Sockets - or, if you're not a computer techie - that's a secure way of two machines communicating, except it turned out to be not so secure after all).

That said - I've gone 100% Linux at home. Still Windoze at work, it'll probably stay that way until I quit and go machining full time...

Hi Ade, Guys,
Yes the "Heartbleed" issue was a real smack in the gob for open source !  However it didn't take long to get a fix in place.  I wonder how long it would have taken M$ or Apple to get around to fixing it !!!

[Nerdz]

Ah But linux may not be safe either..

http://linux-beta.slashdot.org/story/13/09/19/0227238/linus-torvalds-admits-hes-been-asked-to-insert-backdoor-into-linux

But Then theres hardware that might have back doors installed as well..Hmm :/. I use linux for banking/bill paying. Windows for gaming (or if Im lazy to switch to surf the web).

[crueby]

Wow - slow again tonight, taking about a minute and a half to load a page. Was doing pretty good again for a while.

[b.lindsey]

Not that slow here, but it has slowed a bit today vs. last few days. We can thanks all the @^#$* hackers for that, that have nothing better to do!!

Bill

[smfr]

I'm getting lots of "500 Internal server errors" this evening

Simon