You, my readers, have been complaining about flakiness in Sb that goes above and beyond the usual technical flakiness of the site. So have many other readers, in particular PZ's. After a couple of days where the blog loaded slow as the proverbial molasses in Minnesota in January, our benevolent but not particularly communicative overlords have finally revealed to us the reason for our problems:
We have been forwarding reports from bloggers and users to our hosting service, Rackspace, over the past few days. After monitoring our traffic and these reports, Rackspace has determined that ScienceBlogs is experiencing a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack and has blocked a range of IP addresses involved. While this means that ScienceBlogs is now loading correctly for most users, the attack is still ongoing and other users may still encounter sporadic loading problems, or be blocked entirely if they were incorrectly included in these preventative measures.
We're still working with Rackspace to determine how and why this has occurred, and to get the site 100% accessible again, but in the meantime, we'd like to collect IP addresses from users who are still experiencing problems. Please ask anyone who has brought this problem to your attention to send their IP address to webmaster@scienceblogs.com. If they have trouble locating their IP address, you can send them to this site: http://whatismyipaddress.com/
Please also let us know if you are having any trouble accessing the backend of your blogs.
Hackers. Why'd it have to be hackers? I wonder if Orac finally ticked off some anti-vaccinationists enough that they'd go and do something like this, although for some odd reason PZ seems to think he's at fault.
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We all know it's PETA being mad at Uncertain Principals for dog exploitation.
It is clearly the skateboarders upset over PZs depiction of an alternative riding modality on favorite toy.
It's not inconceivable that it's carried out by internet security companies hired by enemies of a resident blogger. Ever heard of HBGary Federal?
A lone hacker is unlikely. I don't see Anonymous hitting a site like this either.
Obviously, this is an attempt to pry an actual emotion out of Dean Toney.
Perhaps it could be visualized like this:
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/08/visualization-of-an.html
It could be any blog that provoked the attack, whether it be known for its snark or not, since pseudoscientists all too often come from a "Mad? They call me mad?? I'll show them who's mad BWAHAHAHAHA!!!11!!111!!!" orientation.
Though I admit I think it would be rather interesting if it turns out to be some lurker who took violent exception to the proposed solution to a mathematical brain teaser.
That sounds pretty plausible to me; I've gotten death threats over the Monty Hall Problem in the past. We may all have our favorite suspects, but really, it could be any crank who's got an ax to grind and access to the resources.
.....And here I thought I'd become inured to dropping my jaw.
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Seconded.
(...And testing if ScienceBlogs works for me again. For two days the pages didn't even load. Now I just commented on Tet Zoo...)
i was going through withdrawal symptoms for lack of my fix of insolence!
Unfortunately, a lot of the IP addresses I use with TOR are now being blocked. So, if someone gets access to the IP address of this particular comment, you might figure out exactly where I am.
Fortunately, I'm where I'm supposed to be. And I am who I said I am.
I'm betting some "God-Warriors" out there hired disgruntled hackers to shut down the evil, atheistic websits that promotes science and stuff.
Putting the request to contact you if I cannot contact you on the site I cannot contact isn't too effective. (This also makes me wonder if you(Teh SciBorg, not Orac) will actually see the e-mail I sent.)
Massive apologies if this winds up being posted multiple times!
I'm currently losing c.60% of all packets, which is a minor but not-too-helpful improvement over the last c.48h, where I was losing of all (100%) packets.
Gah, this is annoying. I sent my IP address to the webmaster, and I was able to access Sb for a couple of hours yesterday morning. Now I can only access from the library wifi. I wish they would get their act together.
I am getting good at retrieving cached copies of articles, but those are not updated much.
FINALLY!
I was really starting to itch all over and was just about to crawl into a corner and shake uncontrollably.
Phew. Glad that's not going to happen.
Using my ex-wife's wlan here to post this because it times out - without exception - on my 3G modem. I've sent about 5 or so requests for the IP to be unblocked, but nothing has happened yet. Is the SB web-master asleep?
Orac, can you email them or something? They seem to think I'm invisible...
@Chris: I sent my home IP to the webmaster yesterday, so hopefully they will get me fixed. I could access using my Verizon MIFI (had to disconnect from my Netgear network, that's completely blocked) and FINALLY got my Sciblogs fix yesterday. And I can connect from work. I hope they get this straightened out soon.
@Ksenija: I know. Orac withdrawal was getting really bad. At least I could still get in from work so it wasn't too bad till the weekend. :)
Chris: "I am getting good at retrieving cached copies of articles, but those are not updated much."
I don't even get that. It's very annoying. To some extent, yeh - SB web-masters need to get a move on. But the main cause of this is the twat who initiated the DDoS attack.