Is this site under attack?

[Krasnaya_Zvezda]

Is some malicious entity somehow hacking this site and causing it to intermittently run so unbelievably slow?
The problems seemed to have started coincidentally with some serious controversy involving one or more disgruntled members.
Is this a far-fetched idea?

 

[Jocko]

Is some malicious entity somehow hacking this site and causing it to intermittently run so unbelievably slow?
The problems seemed to have started coincidentally with some serious controversy involving one or more disgruntled members.
Is this a far-fetched idea?

I too noticed this curious synchronicity - it appeared to begin within a few hours of the initial incident some while ago, which I seem to recall involved vague threats against the site. Let's hope it's pure coincidence.

Edit, 10 minutes later. I don't want to get paranoid, but within 2 or 3 minutes of posting the above, the site suddenly seemed to return to normal. What is going on?

Ian

 

[Socke]

If we're talking about the same member, I don't think he has the ressources to do this.

It takes a lot of mashines with individual internetconections to coordinate a Denial of Service attack against a hosted webserver.

On one of my sites I once made the mistake to upload a very big picture, 6MPixel fine jpeg, and linked it to one of the biggest forums in germany. Our small shared server withstand nearly 1000 connections a minute downlowding that picture but it took me some time to log in and replace the file with a smaller version.

Another slowdown happened when somebody, whom we shared the server with, set up a popular Harry Potter fansite, he moved up to the biggest server available after exhausting his monthly traffic allowance in two days! The effect on my site was noticeable and close to what we have here at the moment.

I had my site on a shared server with 100 websites for quite some time and just moved to a dedicated server since I need the features, not the performance.

 

[leica M2 fan]

Pretty farfetched

Pretty farfetched

Is some malicious entity somehow hacking this site and causing it to intermittently run so unbelievably slow?
The problems seemed to have started coincidentally with some serious controversy involving one or more disgruntled members.
Is this a far-fetched idea?

Nothing as nefarious as that, I read a few days ago a post by Jorge saying the new server would be installed to better carry the increased load and the wait time having diminished I guess it is up and running, say hey ! 😉

 

[MP Guy]

move will be done this week.

 

[ywenz]

The slow performance did not come gradually. I don't think migrating to a new server will help.
I do think some sort of attack is quite possible. I've also noticed the convinient timing of the site's implosion..

 

[photogdave]

Who is this disgruntled member? What was the controversy?

 

[Krasnaya_Zvezda]

Person or persons who should remain unnamed, since it is a theoretical allegation only. But ever since a member was banned, things have been extraordinarily slow, access been difficult. This is the first time I've actually gotten into the forum and been able to open a thread all day, and I've been trying for 3 hours.
It is all circumstantial, but still...

 

[Todd.Hanz]

Person or persons who should remain unnamed, since it is a theoretical allegation only. But ever since a member was banned, things have been extraordinarily slow, access been difficult. This is the first time I've actually gotten into the forum and been able to open a thread all day, and I've been trying for 3 hours.
It is all circumstantial, but still...

You are giving the "unnamed" member more credit than he deserves, besides, that would be very "un-pristine" of him 🙂

todd

 

[Jocko]

Just a note: there seems to have been a sudden improvement in site performance in the last few minutes - at much the same time as a similar "blip" last night. I have no idea what this suggests, but it does seem odd.

Ian

 

[ch1]

I basically can not get to this site between 9 AM and 5 PM US Eastern Time.

Rare exception is right now (3 PM) but doubt access will last.....

 

[BrianShaw]

This is the first thread I've been able to read/access in two days. Usually I get the "databes error" page. Boo-hoo.

 

[Flinor]

I came home last night from over a week with only infrequent computer access and couldn't get on to the site at all and find it quite slow now. Very disappointing.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action. Which stage are we at?

 

[BrianShaw]

This is the first thread I've been able to read/access in two days. Usually I get the "database error" page. Boo-hoo.

 

[Flinor]

I came home last night from over a week with only infrequent computer access and couldn't get on to the site at all and find it quite slow now. Very disappointing.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action. Which stage are we at?

 

[enochRoot]

me too brian!

 

[Fred]

During the recent few days I've got on the forum very slowly between 11:00 and about 2:45 without database error, just slow. Today I've got the from t page twice all day. Managed to 'try' and send a PM about the London trip, no idea if it got there or even if the other member will be able to get on to read it. If things keep on deteriorating at the rate that it is I guess many members will only be able to remember the good ol days. I for one will keep hitting that refresh button from time to time. We all miss this place.

 

[Flyfisher Tom]

I think he-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken has put a curse on the site. It's as slow as molasses.

 

[kmack]

My bet is on bad server configuration.
MySQL is a very fast database. I think that there is a misconfigured database pool or thread time out configuration.

 

[Fred]

I should have said UK time (out)