Is AVSIM undergoing a Denial Of Service attack?!?!?

[avgaskoolaid 292]

Here in the Midwestern US, I've been getting a 503 error every time I try to visit the site. However, after a quick refresh, it works just fine (no glitches, not particularly faster/slower than its ever been). 

[spokes2112 179]

We, the Earth, have been blasted by the 3rd coronal mass ejection in as many weeks.. A possible cause?

[ubersu 78]

If I go in directly via forum.avsim.net the time to response is half or less that of the main page.

 

DJ

[shivers9 1,174]

Same problems here in Florida few several days now. It does seem to be something going on with the main page. Been very slow to respond. Some times refresh works and some times not. I have just kind of thought it may be reaction to the cave dweller threats.

 

UPDATE......OK...here it is, Hillary is erasing more hard drives and got mixed up!!

[n4gix 4,947]

For whatever it's worth, I never even bother with the front page. When I visit AVSIM I come straight to the forums: http://forum.avsim.net/index/

 

I rarely have any problems, although at times the forum server response is a bit on the sluggish side.

[Christopher Low 5,353]

I reckon it's aliens. It must be. Pesky little sods.

[codechris 9]

I guess it should be pointed out that avsim.net and forums.avsim.net point to different IP's so, and I don't know the frontend infrastructure, but the two sites are hosted on different web servers (or multie ther eof, if it's loadblanced) so that might explain why some are seeing hits (i.e if forums is running fine but the main site isn't) and some are not. It depends what you are hitting. I don't know the frontend, so I can't comment, only speculate

[ckyliu 1,749]

I haven't looked at front page in over a week and I've had this issue several times

[Jim Young 2,356]

We are being hit from IP's originating mainly in Russia and some from China and the Ukraine.  I think we are on top of it and these hits on our servers will stop soon. 

 

Best regards,

[Poppet 709]

What does that mean Jim?    that people or organisations are purposely attacking the website Avsim,  to what gain though?  To gather information or a financial gain of some sort 

Or are we just caught between something 

[dgraham1284 92]

It appears a solid IPS and IDS system is needed. A Cisco ASA 5520 with an Adv. IP Sec license would do the trick

[ubersu 78]

Poppet - just a way of being obnoxious in this brave new world we live in.  No gain is necessary.

 

DJ

[Luke 782]

I'd be curious to see what percentage of total site traffic was obviously bogus, relative to legitimate-looking traffic.

 

In my experience, my engineering teams were the sources of most DDOS attacks - poorly written or designed code when run by legitimate users was far more likely to bring us down than a few random hits from overseas.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

[vc10man 732]

We are being hit from IP's originating mainly in Russia and some from China and the Ukraine.  I think we are on top of it and these hits on our servers will stop soon. 

 

Best regards,

Glad to read such reassuring news, Jim. We cannot let these low-life toads in these countries try to undermine our community. Tom would proud of you and all the Avsim Team fighting this off.

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

It appears a solid IPS and IDS system is needed. A Cisco ASA 5520 with an Adv. IP Sec license would do the trick

 

Okay, we'll get that right away!  :rolleyes: Tom went through these issues almost monthly as the site was constantly being hacked by hackers and spammers in certain foreign countries.  We have had a few former members try to destroy our community too.  He was very successful in stopping these attempts.  The infrastructure he built is still very modern and successfully identifying and stopping these attacks.  We also have an additional security firewall.  It's just that this is sort of new to the members of the Board of Directors' but we are learning fast (or at least I am).  There will certainly be some glitches occasionally where members will see the 503 error or some other error message.  Usually hitting F5 30 seconds later will refresh the site and you will be back on (at least this has been my experience).  Anyone who is off longer may need to delete their browser cache and/or shutdown their ISP router for at least 30 seconds, restart, and then log back on.  Clicking on the large AVSIM Icon at the top of the forums or going to the front page will also get you out of the error on some occasions too.

 

Thanks to everyone for the patience.

 

Best regards,