Forum down yesterday??

[None-ya]

Just curious if there is any reason as to why I couldn't get on AFF yesterday??

[Mechan1k]

It took an afternoon nanna nap.

[mad2]

Originally Posted by Mechan1k

It took an afternoon nanna nap.

it was a very goood nap .. too

[russellw]

We had an outage late yesterday afternoon caused (I think) by a rogue Bing bot chewing up server resources by spawning a LOT of page views. It came good after a reboot and blocking that particular spider IP range.

[DFB FGXR6]

I was putting the finishing touches on a lengthy post as it went down, ended up saving the draft into a word document just in case. Was having withdrawals in the end.

[whynot]

Originally Posted by russellw

We had an outage late yesterday afternoon caused (I think) by a rogue Bing bot chewing up server resources by spawning a LOT of page views. It came good after a reboot and blocking that particular spider IP range.

Scary thing is that the Bing bot was probably a Natural Language AI training its neural network on the conversations here.

Just think of some of the instant classic verbal comebacks it has now taught itself.

And "its a fact" that a Camry V6 is faster around a racetrack than just about anything else one cares to mention. Sigh. The cyber world is getting to be a very weird place ....

[DFB FGXR6]

Originally Posted by whynot

Scary thing is that the Bing bot was probably a Natural Language AI training its neural network on the conversations here.

Just think of some of the instant classic verbal comebacks it has now taught itself.

And "its a fact" that a Camry V6 is faster around a racetrack than just about anything else one cares to mention. Sigh. The cyber world is getting to be a very weird place ....

Just wait until "Thailand Special" or "Thailux" becomes a widespread term, it started here first, hey Franko?

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by DFB FGXR6

Just wait until "Thailand Special" or "Thailux" becomes a widespread term, it started here first, hey Franko?

We're going to make it happen, Vote 1 Thailand Specials 2025

Our new AI overlords, trained in English by Franco, oh my lord.

[Sprintey]

Really like 'Thailux' as once nearly choked on Tom Kha soup...

Did you know in the late 1960's Holden had it's own ship, and exported to Thailand?

[Mechan1k]

Always save a copy somewhere before submitting ... especially if lengthy
I have learnt that from past experience.

[DFB FGXR6]

Originally Posted by Mechan1k

Always save a copy somewhere before submitting ... especially if lengthy
I have learnt that from past experience.

Yeah, most of my lengthy posts are now typed in a word processor. Although I lost one last week that I had for some reason typed directly, clicked the wrong exit tab and lost the lot.

[mad2]

Originally Posted by DFB FGXR6

Yeah, most of my lengthy posts are now typed in a word processor. Although I lost one last week that I had for some reason typed directly, clicked the wrong exit tab and lost the lot.

[DFB FGXR6]

Originally Posted by mad2

Not really, more annoyed at myself actually.

[Citroënbender]

Might be time to dust off the old botgun again. #deepsouth #porch

[Franco Cozzo]

Originally Posted by None-ya

Just curious if there is any reason as to why I couldn't get on AFF yesterday??

The database error is what you see when you get banned from AFF, I was wondering what I did wrong as I've been behaving myself mostly

[None-ya]

Makes it worse I can't even remember exactly why I was trying to visit

ADHD moments lol

[russellw]

... and it continued into this morning.
For those who don't want technical details, look away now.

The 'normal' issues we get occur where attempts are made to slow the server down with lots of page requests coming from a single IP address or a cluster of close IP addresses using automated software. A bit like what a legitimate 'bot' does but with a lot more requests. This means that the server is trying to deliver thousands of page loads per minute and simply doesn't have the grunt to do it and slows down to the point of being unusable. These are reasonably easy to fix because once the IP range is identified it can be blocked before they ever get to the server.

More recently, these people have been getting smarter. There is an ISP (and I use the term loosely) called Host Royale that is now being used to do similar attacks to those above but from lots of random IP addresses in countries like UK/USA/Australia and Canada and each IP address only does a handful of concurrent requests so it's almost impossible to block them all without logging all the attempts and then finding ranges to block like: 45.66.0.0/16 or 46.161.11.0/24.

The latest method seems to be to just use those host ranges to attempt to brute force access to the server (the last couple of days) and as these attempts don't actually hit the forum database. it's the network interface that gets hammered so that while the server is running fine, you can't get to it. I've installed software this morning to automate blocking of those attempts at the perimeter but it is also likely it may clobber some legitimate users, particularly those using static IP addresses or VPNs.

[whynot]

But, you will have to admit that the AI building the deep fake of Franco Cozzo is coming along quite nicely. It should make an appearance any day now ...

[Citroënbender]

Good stuff - keeping the malingerers away, seems to get harder by the year.

Is the flak from Host Royale coming from a country with a flag that’s mostly red, or one which has the French colours but rearranged and horizontal?

[russellw]

Almost all of the Host Royale activity is coming from UK/USA/Australia/Canada but the traffic that has been blocking the network is all from China.

[None-ya]

Originally Posted by russellw

Almost all of the Host Royale activity is coming from UK/USA/Australia/Canada but the traffic that has been blocking the network is all from China.

For some reason or another I kinda believe that. . . .

[T3rminator]

Hmmmm what are they after?

Taking AFF off line gains nothing other than to **** some AFF addicts off for a short period of time.

Sometimes a DDOS style attack can be used to hide other traffic coming through....but there is nothing "sensitive" kept on here? There is no personal data and no intellectual property to steal?

Unless they are throwing a wide net all over the place and just seeing what comes back.

[Trevor 57]

I had a problem early this morning, the site wouldn't load

As a side issue it is asking me to sign in every time, it is not remembering me from one log in to the next

[mad2]

Originally Posted by Trevor 57

I had a problem early this morning, the site wouldn't load

As a side issue it is asking me to sign in every time, it is not remembering me from one log in to the next

it's not asking me to sign in again and...

[FoxtrotGolfXray 5.0]

I was getting asked to put in my credentials every page last week, even after I had logged in, but I put that down to the new work laptop. Wasn't happening on my phone.

[CastrolRocks]

..........

[CastrolRocks]

How do we view the posts in correct order please someone?

[mad2]

Originally Posted by CastrolRocks

How do we view the posts in correct order please someone?

what order are you refering too?.


in most of the forum pages the ones with the latest replies are at the top .. except for the "stickies" which are ALWAYS at the top of the page.


hope that was what you were after?.


cheers

[Moo Man]

Originally Posted by CastrolRocks

How do we view the posts in correct order please someone?

You can update your options to display posts as oldest first, newest first etc.

Click on "User CP" at the top left of the menu, then;

under Settings and Options >> Edit Options

>> Thread Display Options >> Thread Display Mode and choose from the dropdown options

[Trevor 57]

Originally Posted by CastrolRocks

..........

Hey Dazzler351, I thought you were banned from here?