EDIT: TBC, here’s the current message seen when refreshing a PF stream:

“Piefed.social is having a denial of service attack. They are being kept at bay for now but could return with a more effective method. Download your community subscriptions so if you need to move to another server it’ll be painless - with a few clicks you’ll be seeing all the same content as before. See list of alternate servers at here or here.”

Possible causes?

  • Fellow instance that got PO’d somehow? (seems like a major stretch)
  • Just random hackers havin’ fun?
  • Reddit or similar, targeting one of the top growing instance softwares in ActivityPub / FV? EDIT2 : the timing certainly seems to fit for the recent influx of users coming from Reddit. (see comments)
  • Some right-wing entity, not happy about the general rational / left bias to the instance?
  • Other…?

In any case, much thanks to our instance runner and dev for fending off the first wave(!) Hope everything is backed up and possible to be restored if the worst happens.

(seriously, what a shitty way to be repaid for doing a great, ongoing job for the community and FOSS)

    • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      6·
      2 days ago

      Top of the PF.S stream:

      Piefed.social is having a denial of service attack. They are being kept at bay for now but could return with a more effective method. Download your community subscriptions so if you need to move to another server it’ll be painless - with a few clicks you’ll be seeing all the same content as before. See list of alternate servers at here or here.

      Sounds a bit concerning to me.

    • Æ@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      very intermittent for me. I think swell of new users like me + corporate interference to a new competitor

      • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialOPEnglish
        9·
        2 days ago

        DDOS is a very specific kind of attack, as I understand it, involving overwhelming a server with rubbish packets.

        • Æ@piefed.socialEnglish
          71·
          2 days ago

          Its a type of attack. Use malware infected computers (botnet) to flood servers woth fake requests. Its a networking traffic jam, where each car has been mind controlled into blocking the route by a nefarious actor. Could be a company paying someone, could be a lone hacker, could be north korea, russia, a wayward child genius, some MIT students making a point. Who knows? Not me. But ddos doesnt just happen randomly, someone has to hit the button. So could be a ddos or just loads of new users creating the jam or ai scrapers. I dont know. I wouldnt be surprised if a few unscrupulous companies want to nip this decentralised threat to their business model in the bud. But then I wouldnt be surprised if a relatively small “site” is just suffering because its user base has doubled in 3 days.