There has been strange goings on at Beyond The Mango Juice over the past couple of days. I returned home from work on Friday evening and proceeded with my usual routine. I had dinner, showered and then settled down for a few hours on the internet. My intention was to view any new posts from my sidebar blogroll and then start work on a new post of my own. Beyond The Mango Juice would not load up on screen and a message kept saying it could not be found. I went to my site control panel and every attempt to login failed and after numerous unsuccessful entries I came to the conclusion that something was wrong. I contacted my domain server Bluehost through their Help Centre and the following online text conversation took place.
Martyn [1:59:04 PM]: I am unable to login to thaisabai.org
Gary [1:59:04 PM]: Hello, to better assist you, may I have the main domain, as well as either the password or last four digits of the credit card on file? Also, please be patient as I’m working with several customers at once.
Martyn [2:00:05 PM]: The main domain is thaisabai.org and the password is ***********
Gary [2:01:15 PM]: ok
[2:02:57 PM]: It appears your server was under a DDoS attack. There’s nothing we can do about DDoS attacks, are you familiar with them? they’re a very nasty attack that you cannot prevent and can only work around after they happen. You can read more info about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack. In the meantime you’ve been issued a dedicated IP address.
Martyn [2:06:10 PM]: What do you mean by a dedicated IP address, how do I access my site
Gary [2:08:06 PM]: your IP address was changed temporarily from your shared IP address to a dediacted IP address
[2:08:15 PM]: this will take 4-24 hours to propagate
Martyn [2:09:20 PM]: So you will contact me. Does this mean I lose my thaisabai.org domain name for good.
Gary [2:10:53 PM]: no, you have not lost the domain name at all. And we won’t be contacting you about anything either.
Martyn [2:11:50 PM]: Okay thank you. Have a good day or evening or whatever it may be. Cheers.
Beyond The Mango Juice was subjected to a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDOS) and the above Wikipedia link offers a lengthy explanation about it. Here is the opening information that appears on the Wikipedia page.
A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.
One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.
The article also goes on to state In the Police and Justice Act 2006, the United Kingdom specifically outlawed denial-of-service attacks and set a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
I am fairly confident that the attack on Beyond The Mango Juice was a random one that was not directed solely at my site but more so on a block of sites but for what purpose I do not know. My blog is not politically motivated or racially offensive so I see no reason for any individual or organization to try to disable it. I offer my apologies for the site being down to public viewing for around six hours but my control panel was unaccessible for over 24 hours which did not allow me to answer the comments received. My thanks for your patience and also a massive thank you to Bluehost for responding so quickly and to their help centre for being of great assistance. Bluehost charges me a mere fraction over £1 a week for hosting my domain. Now would be a good time for all bloggers to make sure they have a current back up of their site. Beyond The Mango Juice hopes to be back to normal posting within the next couple of days.
There has been strange goings on at Beyond The Mango Juice over the past couple of days. I returned home from work on Friday evening and proceeded with my usual routine. I had dinner, showered and then settled down for a few hours on the internet. My intention was to view any new posts from my sidebar blogroll and then start work on a new post of my own. Beyond The Mango Juice would not load up on screen and a message kept saying it could not be found. I went to my site control panel and every attempt to login failed and after numerous unsuccessful entries I came to the conclusion that something was wrong. I contacted my domain server Bluehost through their Help Centre and the following online text conversation took place.
Martyn [1:59:04 PM]: I am unable to login to thaisabai.org
Gary [1:59:04 PM]: Hello, to better assist you, may I have the main domain, as well as either the password or last four digits of the credit card on file? Also, please be patient as I’m working with several customers at once.
Martyn [2:00:05 PM]: The main domain is thaisabai.org and the password is ***********
Gary [2:01:15 PM]: ok
[2:02:57 PM]: It appears your server was under a DDoS attack. There’s nothing we can do about DDoS attacks, are you familiar with them? they’re a very nasty attack that you cannot prevent and can only work around after they happen. You can read more info about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack. In the meantime you’ve been issued a dedicated IP address.
Martyn [2:06:10 PM]: What do you mean by a dedicated IP address, how do I access my site
Gary [2:08:06 PM]: your IP address was changed temporarily from your shared IP address to a dediacted IP address
[2:08:15 PM]: this will take 4-24 hours to propagate
Martyn [2:09:20 PM]: So you will contact me. Does this mean I lose my thaisabai.org domain name for good.
Gary [2:10:53 PM]: no, you have not lost the domain name at all. And we won’t be contacting you about anything either.
Martyn [2:11:50 PM]: Okay thank you. Have a good day or evening or whatever it may be. Cheers.
Beyond The Mango Juice was subjected to a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDOS) and the above Wikipedia link offers a lengthy explanation about it. Here is the opening information that appears on the Wikipedia page.
A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.
One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.
The article also goes on to state In the Police and Justice Act 2006, the United Kingdom specifically outlawed denial-of-service attacks and set a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
I am fairly confident that the attack on Beyond The Mango Juice was a random one that was not directed solely at my site but more so on a block of sites but for what purpose I do not know. My blog is not politically motivated or racially offensive so I see no reason for any individual or organization to try to disable it. I offer my apologies for the site being down to public viewing for around six hours but my control panel was unaccessible for over 24 hours which did not allow me to answer the comments received. My thanks for your patience and also a massive thank you to Bluehost for responding so quickly and to their help centre for being of great assistance. Bluehost charges me a mere fraction over £1 a week for hosting my domain. Now would be a good time for all bloggers to make sure they have a current back up of their site. Beyond The Mango Juice hopes to be back to normal posting within the next couple of days.
There has been strange goings on at Beyond The Mango Juice over the past couple of days. I returned home from work on Friday evening and proceeded with my usual routine. I had dinner, showered and then settled down for a few hours on the internet.
My intention was to view any new posts from my sidebar blogroll and then start work on a new post of my own. Beyond The Mango Juice would not load up on screen and a message kept saying it could not be found.
I went to my site control panel and every attempt to login failed and after numerous unsuccessful entries I came to the conclusion that something was wrong. I contacted my domain server Bluehost through their Help Centre and the following online text conversation took place.
Martyn [1:59:04 PM]: I am unable to login to thaisabai.org
Gary [1:59:04 PM]: Hello, to better assist you, may I have the main domain, as well as either the password or last four digits of the credit card on file? Also, please be patient as I’m working with several customers at once.
Martyn [2:00:05 PM]: The main domain is thaisabai.org and the password is ***********
Gary [2:01:15 PM]: ok
Gary [2:02:57 PM]: It appears your server was under a DDoS attack. There’s nothing we can do about DDoS attacks, are you familiar with them? They’re a very nasty attack that you cannot prevent and can only work around after they happen. You can read more info about it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack. In the meantime you’ve been issued a dedicated IP address.
Martyn [2:06:10 PM]: What do you mean by a dedicated IP address, how do I access my site.
Gary [2:08:06 PM]: Your IP address was changed temporarily from your shared IP address to a dediacted IP address.
Gary [2:08:15 PM]: This will take 4-24 hours to propagate.
Martyn [2:09:20 PM]: So you will contact me. Does this mean I lose my thaisabai.org domain name for good.
Gary [2:10:53 PM]: No, you have not lost the domain name at all. And we won’t be contacting you about anything either.
Martyn [2:11:50 PM]: Okay thank you. Have a good day or evening or whatever it may be. Cheers.
Beyond The Mango Juice was subjected to a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDOS) and the above Wikipedia link offers a lengthy explanation about it. Here is the opening information that appears on the Wikipedia page.
A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person or people to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely. Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers.
One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.
The article also goes on to state ‘In the Police and Justice Act 2006, the United Kingdom specifically outlawed denial-of-service attacks and set a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.’
I am fairly confident that the attack on Beyond The Mango Juice was a random one that was not directed solely at my site but more so on a block of sites but for what purpose I do not know. My blog is not politically motivated or racially offensive so I see no reason for any individual or organization to try to disable it.
I offer my apologies for the site being down to public viewing for around six hours but my control panel was unaccessible for over 24 hours which did not allow me to further answer any comments received. My thanks for your patience and also a massive thank you to Bluehost for responding so quickly and to their help centre for being of great assistance. Bluehost charges me a fraction over £1 a week for hosting my domain, an absolute bargain with a speedy and an intelligent defense system as well.
After this surprising attack on Beyond The Mango Juice now would be a good time for all bloggers to make sure they have a current back up of their site. Beyond The Mango Juice hopes to be back to normal posting within the next couple of days. Thanks. Up periscope. Scan 360, nice and slow.
© 2009, Martyn. All rights reserved.
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yikes! DDOS?? thankfully, I’ve not had the ‘honor’ of such an experience myself (*fingers crossed, knocking on wood!*). Hope you manage to get everything back on track.
.-= *lynne*´s last blog ..Facial expressions: East & West interpret them differently =-.
HD annoying but interesting since your domain will be hosted on a server presumably blue host. So I guess the “attack” was not specifically directed at you but your host?? Or the server that provides your Internet connection??
A couple of weeks ago I had a site in USA go through every page of MTF. Which may be a similar thing. Since I host my site with Google I guess their servers copes with such actions.
On your analytics or statcounter is there any pattern for the time period?
Hope everything is OK now.
.-= Mike´s last blog ..Thailand or Malaysia for Retirement =-.
Mike – There are no hit entries for the period of attack. I don’t understand the ins and outs of it all but when the DDOS attack happened Bluehost immediately moved my domain to a temporary address and basically let the attack hit an empty domain shell. The aftermath is not too bad with only a few applications on BTMJ and Photo Captions not working. I was more annoyed about not being able to access my control panel for what turned out to be over 30 hours of shutdown.
Lynne I hope it doesn’t happen to you as well and luckily there has been only minor internal damage. WordPress tends to update its dashboard every couple of weeks so I will limp along until the next one.
A denial of service attack – How terrible! (Knock on wood) I’m glad that you didn’t have any lasting damage.
Which reminds me… I still need to put the WP backup plugin on WLT. If I lose any posts, I’d certainly cry in frustration.
.-= Catherine´s last blog ..Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations: Thai Episode =-.
Catherine – I really don’t understand the DDOS technical jargon that Wikipedia lists but Mike’s comment makes it clear to me that the attack was not on BTMJ but on the actual server.
‘I’m glad that you didn’t have any lasting damage’….No but temporarily my spellchecker is down and some of my plugins are not working and I can’t reload them, I’ll just have to wait for the next wordpress update. Definitely backup your posts.
i suspect my site was also attacked a few times for sure but glad to see you are back up
i get the feeling that some sites in thailnd are behind a lot of this i have no proof but a good nose for these things
i think blogging will be the death of some of the bigger forums they wont give up but only new fish
who fall for the spam posts will be there core readers
log live blogging up the mango juice
Martyn,
How terrible. Times like this, I wished we could invoke the sharia to deal with the perpertrator !
When my hubby returned from Russia on 27th July, he noticed the next day that his laptop has been hijacked by a spammer. The PC was used to send half edited spams continuously. He could not access his PC at all. It was a nightmare. Using the virus scanner, it took 16 days of 24hrs scanning to rid it of virusses, worms n what hv u ! As a precaution, the entire hard disk was cleansed n re-installed. We r still trying to figure out how the buggers managed to get in. He worked both in his host’s office as well as in his hotel room .. hm ??
Poor hubby had a fortnight of tossing n turning in his sleep n getting more grey hairs worrying abt sensitive files on the hard disk that needs to be “rebuilt” ! *Big sigh*
Russia and a hijacked computer, Dutchie it all sounds like the start of a new spy thriller. Spam is an absolute nightmare and I have to delete it everyday as a spam plugin always seems to wreak havoc with my control panel. My money is on his hotel room being secretly worked over and a program implanted into his laptop to bring the western world’s computers crashing down.
Martyn…you are getting too uppity so I unleashed my trained attack penguins on you to shut you down. That Cat woman is next bwahahaha.
Don’t be worried about the attack. It was an attack against the IP not your site. Unless you are on a dedicated server by yourself you share space with at least 300-800 ( if not more ) other web sites that all share the same IP address.
The attack was leveled against the whole IP in order to shut someone down and you got caught in the crossfire.
It sucks but it happens. Hopefully they will keep it all sorted .
.-= Talen´s last blog ..BNE the Bane of Bangkok =-.
John thanks for your concern and I hope your blogs stay free of the hackers and whoever may be behind these things. The more I read Mike’s comment makes me convinced that the attack was on the server and not BTMJ. Btw when is your next trip to Thailand.
Talen game set and match, you’ve now convinced me that it was an attack on the server. I was hoping you would have a read of this one as you seem well informed on such matters very much like Mike is. I must go as my anti penguin plugin has finished downloading and I really must get it set up on the firewall. Cheers.
Oh my goodness! I’m sure you know this, but Twitter went down earlier this month ‘cos of a DoS attack to stop a Russian blogger Cyxymu talking on Live Journal about the Russia-Georgia conflict. Maybe you’d better go undercover for a while?
Anyway, glad you didn’t lose any data, it was a good and timely reminder to back up my blog site!
.-= Frances´s last blog ..Two rabbits with head tilt cured by worming =-.
Frances this is the first I have heard of the Twitter and Russian blogger DoS attack, it all sounds like the old spy stories we used to read about. I think with the hits BTMJ gets then it is undercover already. Thanks.
Wow, what a freaky, random thing to happen. It seems that a couple of bigger sites were taken down last week. I heard a conspiracy theory that sites criticising the Obama regime were getting taken down but as you say, your site is not political! I’m with Bluehost too – I joined them when I was in SA. I got tired of managing my own blogs though and do everything on free Blogger blogs for now.
.-= Emm´s last blog ..London: The City, the Monument & the Bridge =-.
Hello Emm I didn’t realise a couple of sites got taken out but this attack seems to have been on my server and not BTMJ. Even with all that’s happened I really do think Bluehost and WordPress are real pro outfits. Thanks.