Chinese cyber attack thwarted

The Climate Conversation web site has been under determined attack by cyber criminals over the last two months. Over 5.5 million web requests and 1.3 million spam messages deluged the server during September and October. I wondered at the persistently slow responses and recently complained. My web host provider was already diagnosing the problem and yesterday brought the attacks to an end, though at the cost of isolating China. Sorry, China!

Our web traffic, already busy, had soared to three times normal, 80% to 90% of it from China, enormously inflating our log files. The SysAdmin told me:

Your logs have been much larger than normal for months, but only caused the server to stop all processing in the last few weeks. Your logs haven’t processed for over a month but others on the server only stopped when yours hung for a week.

Continue Reading →

Visits: 45