Today, like the past few days, we have had some downtime. Apparently some script kids are enjoying themselves by targeting our server (and others). Sorry for the inconvenience.

Most of these ‘attacks’ are targeted at the database, but some are more ddos-like and can be mitigated by using a CDN. Some other Lemmy servers are using Cloudflare, so we know that works. Therefore we have chosen Cloudflare as CDN / DDOS protection platform for now. We will look into other options, but we needed something to be implemented asap.

For the other attacks, we are using them to investigate and implement measures like rate limiting etc.

  • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That’s easier said than done, DDoS mitigation requires a large amount of servers that are only really useful to persist an active DDoS attack. It’s why everyone uses Cloudflare, because of the amount of customers they serve there’s pretty much always an active attack to fend off. Decentralization wouldn’t work great for it because you would have to trust every decentralized node not to perform man in the middle attacks. But if you know of any such solution I’d love to hear it.

    • PropaGandalf@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah I see the issue but on the other side you would get a more robust network which could also be incentivised by some sort of underlying blockchain technology. The man in the middle attack could also be mitigated on a technical level.

            • TheBeege@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Chances are that you’re being sarcastic, but in the event you’re not or if others want to learn…

              Interesting tech. Almost zero practically useful applications.

              Blockchains are effectively reproducible, verifiable ledger systems. But if the ledger grows infinitely, your storage and compute costs also grow infinitely. I’ve heard this has been solved, but I haven’t seen an implementation yet. (If anyone knows of one, please share!)

              Another issue is the proofing system. Bitcoin uses proof of work, which means you need to do more computational work to produce new blocks on the chain. If the computational work grows, that means you need more and more powerful computers. This means increased cost which means centralization as participants with less money to pay for compute get pushed out. Alternatively, there’s proof of stake, where having some amount of a token or some similar value/stake allows you to write new blocks. This does reduce the computation cost but still causes those with lots of tokens/stake to get even more tokens/stake, which in turn allows them to spend more for new blocks… which creates a loop towards centralization.

              So basically, the technology that preaches decentralization naturally centralizes in practical use over time.

      • ClamDrinker@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can’t mitigate a man in the middle attack on a technical level… Because they are a man in the middle… That’s the point of using DDoS mitigation. Nothing’s stopping them from just sending incoming traffic to a phishing site if a bad actor was in control of it.

      • Raccoonsteer@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Dunno if this guy is just so stupid or is trolling at this point. Using random tech buzzwords that have no relevance to the issue.

        • Tubamajuba@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You’ve never blockchained your decentralized DDoS backend with a bi-duplex CDN enumerator?

          • Raccoonsteer@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Well I did mitigate an attack before using quantum entanglement calibrated against the cosmological constant to mitigated carbon decay. Does that count? Oh and, blockchain and decentralized. Haha

        • PropaGandalf@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I myself am not sure who here understands anything about blockchain technology. For you it’s just NFT images and shitcoins that you associate with blockchain, isn’t it? That knowledge is enough for you to understand the whole technology. Read my other comments and ask yourself first if you have a balanced information base.

      • SergioFLS@feddit.cl
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        1 year ago

        You had me until you mentioned blockchain technology. How would a blockchain system help in that regard, anyway?

        • PropaGandalf@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          A blockchain can complement a decentralised network by introducing trust into such a network, where the individual members cannot be trusted. This makes it possible to accurately document actions and reward or punish them accordingly. If you take such a distributed CDN network as an example, a blockchain could help to directly reward the individual members according to their contributions instead of building everything on voluntariness and goodwill as in the Tor network.