So the past 24 hours we've been under a massive DDoS. The good news, it's not effecting us at all. It's being blackholed. However, I'm starting to believe that this is a government sanctioned attack. Bear with me as I explain.


Here is the over 1b hits...



These are the 3 datacenters involved.


https://bgp.he.net/AS3320
https://lg.telekom.com AS3320 Deutsche Telekom AG

https://bgp.he.net/AS8220
https://www.colt.net Colt Technologies

https://bgp.he.net/AS1273 Vodafone Group UK

All 3 seem to be coming from EU based cell providers, one is UK, one is German, and not sure yet about Colt. Normally DDoS attacks are all over the map but not this one, it's as if the attacks are intended from the inside of the datacenters. In other words...coordinated. You might ask, well why would they do that? Because of these attacks I'm forced to block the entire ASN, which means a TON of people in UK and Germany can't access HF without a VPN. My guess is that's the intent.

Note how evenly distributed the attack is from each datacenter? How is that possible unless it's coordinated by the datacenters themselves?

Both UK and Germany continue to have totalitarian laws on free speech that does include topics on hacking. We all know the NCA has an account here and my guess is that German officials do as well. Maybe they think I'll block these countries so the attack stops?

I'm just puzzled why anyone would carry on attack for so long that's not even slowing HF down. Who would waste such resources in a vain attempt? What would be the purpose otherwise?

What do you think? Am I just crazy paranoid or am I onto something? Do you think government agencies would do this? Yes, I am speculating but hey, it's all fun.

#1 500,000 Satoshi's 5430649 [mention=5430649]
#1 500,000 Satoshi's 5252466 [mention=5252466]
#2 250,000 Satoshi's 5549407 [mention=5549407]
#3 150,000 Satoshi's 5561608 [mention=5561608]
#4 100,000 Satoshi's 494292 [mention=494292]
#5 5 Permanent Ub3r Upgrades [mention=4774695] [mention=5500202] [mention=5531273] [mention=5544691] [mention=693820]
#6 5 Permanent L33t Upgrades [mention=5557621] [mention=5538860] [mention=5563462] [mention=5469376] [mention=5556586]

Those are the winning members. Congratulations. I will be contacting everyone about their prizes.

Thank you for participating. Looking forward to more of these.

Best days ahead.

EDIT: [mention=4977539] has been disqualified because he was using a script to make posts. He's closed now and his prize granted to another member.

EDIT: Severe apologies, but I didn't run the first place query on threads table. An error on my part. That's what I get for doing this before I had my morning coffee. [mention=5252466] can keep his lucky award for being so unlucky. The real winner is [mention=5430649].

Don't panic. We were offline for 8 hours last night, I was sleeping. After some investigating this is unrelated to an attack or exploit. It's related to an action taken by the datacenter on the server which glitched Nginx. It's a strange situation, has happened a couple times before where they console into server and it messes up the Nginx server with the work they do. It's an IP thing. I don't want to go into details at this time but it would be corrected when we're on new server. It's also a rare occurrence.


Sorry for the downtime.

I'm going to start the Mentor group again. Mentors on HF are moderators and a member guidance group. The group has moderator permission in most of the Social, Money, and Tech forums but nothing in Market. Mentors should assist new members that ask questions. They should understand HF policies well enough so they can guide the rest of the forum members.

In that spirit I need to start the group with just 3 Mentors. I could just hand-pick them but I think having some formal application to the group makes the most sense. Please note that these first 3 Mentors (and Staff) are going to vote in the next MoTM. As a Mentor you cannot win/earn MoTM. My guess is many of you who are applying may already have the award.

If you wish to be one of the first 3 Mentors please reply and fill out this application....

1. How many hours per day/week do you spend on HF?
2. How do you typically engage with other members on HF?
3. How familiar are you with HF Help Docs?
4. What qualities would you look for in a MoTM candidate?
4. If you are a Mentor, how would your membership change?
5. What's your personal expertise and level in hacking?
6. What approach would you take to mentor new members? How would you ensure they feel welcomed and supported?
7. How would you handle conflict between members?

A member recently created a suggestion thread. Part of their suggestion was to encourage quality activity. However, there was no ideas on exactly how to do that.

So, in the interest of getting actual suggestions and feedback for such a thing...what's your idea to push quality content on HF?

Please try to be specific too, obviously things like Awards and/or Bytes comes into play as forms of encouragement but ideas should be more than "give out more awards/bytes".