Can't access searchirc.com

Beatforge · none Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 4

Hi, could you please tell me what has happened?

I'm just able to access the searchirc-website from work, from home I get a DNS-error. All other pages work fine. And it used to work some days ago.

That's really very strange...

Thanks alot. B.

Mary · SearchIRC Admin Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 696

Heya Beatforge,

This genius on a dialup is using a script to make multiple connections to our site (he has also been coming in through your home ISP, which is the reason we have it blocked).

Subject: Throttle on 80.142.235.80 due to 225 found connections

SUBMITTED BY: 80.142.235.80

URL: /images/10

This is a copy of an email that tells us he is attempting to flood our site by making 225 connections within a matter of seconds - connection #225 is set to page 10 of our Images collection.

We thank him very much for helping us fine tune our security. :D We'll be contacting his provider with logs later today, and hopefully you will be able to access our site again soon.

Beatforge · none Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 4

OK, thanks alot for your answer Smile

I hope that I can access your site again real soon!

But do you really think that he wanted to flood your site? From a single dialup-connection? Probably he was just using a poorly coded script to get that images-page.

Just my 2 cents here, B.

Mary · SearchIRC Admin Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 696

He's been at it for about five days now. People forget that webmasters can see everything that is going on - every connection, every page, every request is sent to the server. At times the flooder has connected to our home page while his script is running on the images section, and then he refreshes over and over - definitely watching to see if what he is doing is affecting us or slowing us down. It didn't. He has been blocked from our site. We have logs, and his ISP has been contacted with those logs so they can deal with him and we can lift our ban for you and others who want access to SearchIRC.

We're very fortunate that we don't get attacked much, but we do have people who try to get full server lists for all networks, full lists of all the channels in our database (that's over 53,000 web pages), all the images in the image section, etc. For our security and the security of the networks and people who use them, we have ways to deal with abuse. It helps that Jason has a very evil mind and thinks of most things before others do. hehe

Beatforge · none Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 4

Does it affect a server that much? You seem to be hosted by rackshack which have really nice servers and a HUGE traffic-allotment.

Mary · SearchIRC Admin Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 696

Jason likes things moving fast, so of course he has a lot of bandwidth and a nice big server. 200, even 2000 more connections in one minute isn't going to bring SearchIRC to its knees. But left unchecked, flooding can affect any website, no matter how much bandwidth they have. Since we like to go to bed at night and find our website here when we wake up in the morning, its wise to ban anyone who attacks the site.

Jason · Posted: Sep 11, 2003 1:43pm Post subject:

The simple answer is: Flooding is never acceptable, and I will aggressively block anyone who does it.

I pay for SearchIRC out of my pockets. I've programmed virtually every aspect of the website from scratch on my own time. I don't feel that there is any reason why I should tolerate abuse of my services and bandwidth, especially when I provide them for free.

Beatforge · none Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 4

The last weeks it worked fine again. But I can't access it anymore from yesterday inwards.
Damn....What the hell did you do? :evil: