Website/Forum down since 10:45am

[DarkieBoy]

I noticed that the Website/Forum went down at 10:45am and came back online at about 16:40 (six hours).  Does anybody know what happened?

DB.

[The Webmaster]

I can tell you what happened DB - I've gone completely grey in a matter of hours! 



No but seriously - we are still waiting for some further info, but from what we can gather at the moment, there was some network connection problems to do with DNS routing at the data centre, affecting some 60+ other servers.

Apparently things were resolved relatively quickly considering the scale of problems, but further delays had been caused by DNS info propagation around the net.

Or so we have been told! 


Jim

[OldBreweryDrinker]

I thought it was down as i couldn't access it. Is it going to be ok from now on Webmaster ?

[The Webmaster]

I thought it was down as i couldn't access it. Is it going to be ok from now on Webmaster ?

We've been told that things 'should' be OK now, and that the situation is being closely monitored. So to give to a highly technical answer; 'fingers crossed' 

[The Webmaster]

Members and visitors may have noticed further website problems - with pages appearing slowly or not at all.

We were reluctant to publicly post actual details - as it appeared we may had been under a cyber attack - and didn't want to reveal the fact that we were gathering information, as were others assisting us, by monitoring what's called 'open proxy honeypots' - basically waiting for our attackers to make some fundamental mistakes which could reveal their identity / location.

I can now state that at this stage - we have gathered the information we required, and are now making some protective adjustments.

I will keep you all updated. Thank you in anticipation for your patience and understanding.


Jim

[ian]

It's taken me half a hour to log on tonight so maybe not fixed yet.

ian.

[The Webmaster]

Again apologies for those who've been having access problems to this site.

We have identified the current source(s) of attack - and are currently upgrading our automated flood protection.

I wonder who could be instigating the attacks to try and disrupt this website? 

Well whoever is behind it - could be due for an unpleasant surprise soon! 

[DarkieBoy]

I can access the Forum on my mobile phone (Vodafone) but not via mu landline (Virgin Media) and I get a 403 Forbidden error.

DB.

[The Webmaster]

I can access the Forum on my mobile phone (Vodafone) but not via mu landline (Virgin Media) and I get a 403 Forbidden error.

DB.

Hi DB - sorry about that! We're just currently tweaking the security - hopefully all should be OK now?

Jim

[DarkieBoy]

No joy as yet.

DB.

[ian]

Just logged on using Karoo and it took all of 5 seconds.

[The Webmaster]

Just logged on using Karoo and it took all of 5 seconds.

Hi Ian,

Is that much longer than usual?


Jim

[OnTheDrink]

Problems getting on again yesterday afternoon but OK now and pages are loading noticeably faster.  Pinged the IP and the average round trip was 35ms and TTL was 55ms which is fair.

[The Webmaster]

Problems getting on again yesterday afternoon but OK now and pages are loading noticeably faster.  Pinged the IP and the average round trip was 35ms and TTL was 55ms which is fair.

Thanks for that

[ian]

Just logged on using Karoo and it took all of 5 seconds.

Hi Ian,

Is that much longer than usual?


Jim

Hi Jim, the 5 seconds quoted was just a guess and yes  maybe it was a lot quicker, just like this time. It does seam to be back to normal again. 

ian.