Is anyone having error 504?

[Vod]

It's responding fast for me now.  DDoS attack over?

[Welsh]

Has Cloudflare had an effect on DDOS attacks at all? I'm guessing there's been a few attempts since it was introduced, but we haven't noticed. I haven't used cloudflare, but I assume they let you know if there is an unusual amount of traffic happening?

I'm still finding the site a little sluggish, but not running into any errors or anything.

[TheQuin]

Has Cloudflare had an effect on DDOS attacks at all? I'm guessing there's been a few attempts since it was introduced, but we haven't noticed. I haven't used cloudflare, but I assume they let you know if there is an unusual amount of traffic happening?

I'm still finding the site a little sluggish, but not running into any errors or anything.

The main effect it has is that it can be adjusted to deal with an attack a lot easier than if you have your own custom system. It just saves a lot of work.

[theymos]

DDoS attack over?

No, but for now I'm successfully filtering it.

Has Cloudflare had an effect on DDOS attacks at all? I'm guessing there's been a few attempts since it was introduced, but we haven't noticed. I haven't used cloudflare, but I assume they let you know if there is an unusual amount of traffic happening?

CF stops all sub-layer-7 attacks, which is somewhat useful. But I was doing pretty well at stopping those on my own. What caused me to switch to Cloudflare in the first place was tens of thousands of IPs doing things which seemed indistinguishable from real-world traffic. For those layer-7 attacks, Cloudflare has been a mixed bag.

First of all, I can enable the "checking your browser" thing, and that stops almost all attacker traffic. But that also breaks noscript browsers and bots, so I don't like to do it too much. Skilled attackers can also sometimes get through that, though I think that it does require a proof-of-work.

Cloudflare is honestly not very good at detecting attack traffic. You'd think that they'd be able to detect things like a huge influx of IPs that are not the regular visitors, or IPs that are not used for regular traffic on any of CF's sites, or a bunch of weird request patterns that have never been done before in the history of the site. I feel like I'd be able to write this kind of general detection code if I had a year to dedicate to it, and I'm not a giant corporation. So that's a disappointment. But nobody else is better AFAIK. I talked to Incapsula at length, and their tech is AFAICT basically the same as Cloudflare, but a lot more expensive.

[@oweljayr]

Yes, It happened to my browser too.  Probably they are having some updates with the site that is why we'd experience that.  I thought I was the only one having that error that I had to turn my PC on and off for several times.

[deerlion]

Why would someone DDos these forums? What could they possibly gain from doing this?

Glad to see everything working now, because I wasn't able to use the forums the past 3 hours.

[inPRIVACYweBELIEVE]

DDoS attack over?

No, but for now I'm successfully filtering it.

I can see the filtering is working. I am browsing the forum smoothly from last 15 minutes. Hope it's over for now until the attacker have their next move  

[hilariousetc]

I feel like I'd be able to write this kind of general detection code if I had a year to dedicate to it, and I'm not a giant corporation. So that's a disappointment.

Why don't you work on that after you're done with he new forum? I've always though cloudflare was crap. If something better can be made then I'm sure you could make a business out of it, or at the very least the forum would benefit.

Why would someone DDos these forums? What could they possibly gain from doing this?

Glad to see everything working now, because I wasn't able to use the forums the past 3 hours.

Because they're dicks. Some people just get off on it and do it because they can. Sometimes people also do it in an extortion attempt: "pay up or we won't stop".

[inPRIVACYweBELIEVE]

Sometimes people also do it in an extortion attempt: "pay up or we won't stop".

Some people find it fun to do it which is obviously bad for the victim.

PS: Just out of curiosity, is there any relationship between hilariousetc and hilariousandco?

[cryptofarid10]

There was an DDos  attack on the site. So there was a problem in the server for 5 hours.  we all felt some problems. so we could not access your account. Now it's okay.

[Lafu]

Yeah working fast and great again !
Refreshing and Threads opening have taken long but worked !
Only creating Posts or Quotes hasnt worked for me , but fine now again wooot  !

  

[Alone055]

PS: Just out of curiosity, is there any relationship between hilariousetc and hilariousandco?

They are cousin brothers. 
Okay, I'm kidding. @hilariousetc is the alternative account of @hilariousandco. Or, @hilariousandco is the alternative account of @hilariousetc, but I think the first one is correct assuming @hilariousandco was created before and is in the DT, or has been a part of DT for a longer time, because I'm not sure if @hilariousetc is in the DT or not.

[athanz88]

It is working just fine for me now, I can say the forum is back for me.

snipe

Why don't you work on that after you're done with he new forum? I've always though cloudflare was crap. If something better can be made then I'm sure you could make a business out of it, or at the very least the forum would benefit.

Theymos would be gone if you bring the topic of "new forum" . Well cant blame him tho, i believe it is a hard thing to maintain a big forum like these,

snip

Because they're dicks. Some people just get off on it and do it because they can. Sometimes people also do it in an extortion attempt: "pay up or we won't stop".

Or maybe some competitor? This question would raise a lot of thing i guess, but i am not accusing someone here.

[Juggy777]

DDoS attack over?

No, but for now I'm successfully filtering it.

Has Cloudflare had an effect on DDOS attacks at all? I'm guessing there's been a few attempts since it was introduced, but we haven't noticed. I haven't used cloudflare, but I assume they let you know if there is an unusual amount of traffic happening?

CF stops all sub-layer-7 attacks, which is somewhat useful. But I was doing pretty well at stopping those on my own. What caused me to switch to Cloudflare in the first place was tens of thousands of IPs doing things which seemed indistinguishable from real-world traffic. For those layer-7 attacks, Cloudflare has been a mixed bag.

First of all, I can enable the "checking your browser" thing, and that stops almost all attacker traffic. But that also breaks noscript browsers and bots, so I don't like to do it too much. Skilled attackers can also sometimes get through that, though I think that it does require a proof-of-work.

Cloudflare is honestly not very good at detecting attack traffic. You'd think that they'd be able to detect things like a huge influx of IPs that are not the regular visitors, or IPs that are not used for regular traffic on any of CF's sites, or a bunch of weird request patterns that have never been done before in the history of the site. I feel like I'd be able to write this kind of general detection code if I had a year to dedicate to it, and I'm not a giant corporation. So that's a disappointment. But nobody else is better AFAIK. I talked to Incapsula at length, and their tech is AFAICT basically the same as Cloudflare, but a lot more expensive.

It's a DDoS.

I suspected this was the reason after initial 30 minutes of not being able to access the site I decided to see if there was any update on twitter, last time in a similar situation we had gotten a update there. I'm glad the site is up and running for all, this is the second big Ddos attack on this site in two years, but im glad thermos got it up in time.

I was planning to take Ddos for my site but after reading this review I feel it's not worth to take it for my website thanks theymos for the detailed explanation.

[Scoobers]

Is everything back to normal now? This is the first time I've been able to get on here today. Though it might be a DDOS. There are some vindictive people out there 

[cabalism13]

It often happens lately.
I think this was the fourth time.
Am I the only one who noticed it?
Or Am I just the only one who has been experiencing it?

[bitart]

...
First of all, I can enable the "checking your browser" thing, and that stops almost all attacker traffic. But that also breaks noscript browsers and bots, so I don't like to do it too much. Skilled attackers can also sometimes get through that, though I think that it does require a proof-of-work.
...

Checking your browser is still on, but it's not a problem for me.
The interesting part in your answer is the following:

...
But that also breaks noscript browsers and bots

So theoretically it can stop bots, who spam nonsense posts forumwide? Does this work in practice as well?
Or those bots are not that kind of bots?

If noscript browser means e.g. tor browser, than I can understand that you don't like to use this checking your browser a lot, just when it's absolutely necessary.

[DeathAngel]

Seems quick for me now but wasn’t able to get on at all today until now

[hase0278]

So theoretically it can stop bots, who spam nonsense posts forumwide? Does this work in practice as well?
Or those bots are not that kind of bots?
If noscript browser means e.g. tor browser

No script browser can pertain to any browser with a script blocker installed. As far as I know, it can stop bots because most of the times bots use no script browsers to do the repetitive tasks set by its user and enabling the checking your browser feature of Cloudflare makes them somehow unable to access the forum.

DDoS attack over?

No, but for now I'm successfully filtering it.

Can I assume that the DDoS attack is finally over now? Site response time is fast again.

[mazdafunsun]

I too had some problems with acces to forum, was thinking that it could be beacause of increased bot traffic. It seems that everything is working well at the moment.

Why would someone DDos these forums? What could they possibly gain from doing this?

Glad to see everything working now, because I wasn't able to use the forums the past 3 hours.

As far as i have heard that this is one of the methods how hackers could gain acces to information which is stored to server..? like passwords.
Also as others have mentioned before, it could be an attemt to extort webpage owners if the server or admin cant handle the attack.