Over the past 24 hours, the website has been under attack from a number of DDOS attacks from, of all places, India. I have submitted multiple tickets to keep us up and running and the ladies at Hosting Matters have been working round the clock to keep us up and running.
Related, it appears that the wheels are finally starting to really come off the bus regarding the website, and I have been in contact with the trio of commenters who are helping me pick the web designer/developer so we can begin to create the new site. The fundraiser gave us a good sum to pick a quality contractor, so we should be able to move forward with that hopefully in the next week or so.
For those of you who wanted to wait until the New Year to kick in, as always, the paypal link is to the right.
In personal news, it is cloudy as hell here in Miami and I am cranky.
kindness
Who do you figure is directing the DOS attack?
John Cole
@kindness: I’m just blaming nazis for everything these days because 90% of the time it turns out they are to blame.
BruceFromohio
And now it’s alright, it’s okay
And you may look the other way
We can try to understand
The New York Times’ effect on man
Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother
You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive
Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’
And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive
@kindness: My money is on Paul Ryan. After the alleged dog-snuggling incident, he’s itching to settle some scores.
MobiusKlein
Lots of attacks are just rando scripts just trying every possible attack vector, over & over with variation.
SQL injection in Accept-Language headers,
javascript user names,
and so on.
Fuckers must die!
Ruckus
The attacks are coming from India, doesn’t mean they originated there.
rikyrah
Trump curiously well versed in specific Russian talking points
Rachel Maddow reviews instances when Donald Trump parroted Russian narratives on international affairs in a way that seems oddly out of character from Trump’s typical presentation of how he understands the world.
rikyrah
Trump parrots Russian revisionism on Soviet Afghanistan invasion
Rachel Maddow points out that the only other place where the views expressed by Donald Trump about the justifications for the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan can be found are in Russian propaganda. Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, joins to discuss Trump’s peculiar fluency in Russian revisionism.
The Moar You Know
@Ruckus: Bingo. They have good IT infrastructure but terrible individual machine security, perfect for a bot builder. We get quite a bit of attention from non-US based trolls – that’s been obvious for a long time. Failing to throw us off message using social engineering, they’ve resorted to this (and I suspect we will see lots more of these attacks here).
See also: cyber attacks in Germany today. All political parties save AfD got hit and hit hard. No agenda for destabilization there, no sir!
rikyrah
Democratic diversity on display as new class sworn-in
Rachel Maddow reports on the celebratory swearing in of new members of Congress and the new Democratic majority, including the election of Nancy Pelosi to reprise her role as House Speaker, and notes the changing role of activists who helped influence the outcome of many 2018 races and now look to maintain accountability of their representatives.
rikyrah
Sorry to hear about the site, Cole.
But, you find something fun to do, Cole. :)
Thanks for checking in.
lee
As others pointed out. It might be a different party just routing the attack through India.
I put a bit more in the kitty for the upgrade even though threaded comments will never happen on this site. ;-)
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Oh, so now the Demon-rats are celebrating swearing? By a Mooooslim, no less? Instead of trying to find common ground* with the Republicans?
*”common ground” == giving the Republicans 110 percent of what they want.
Bill Arnold
(botnet you mean) Yeah. The general attention, well. As you suggest, it is clearly not about money.
khead
If this was a top 1000 blog, it would be attacked by the Russians. Sad!
Adam L Silverman
What did @schrodingers-cat know and when did she know it?//
Schlemazel
Sorry you have to deal with this shit JC
I really have not noticed anything awful. Not sure that is good news but I’m OK with it
JPL
I’m going to chip in a small amount, and I wish it could be more. Unfortunately, $10,000 for a new roof has drained my pocketbook.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Did you see this sweet story about new CA House Rep Katie Hill picking Shirley Chisholm’s old office so she could swap it with Ayanna Pressley from MA, who really, really wanted it but drew a high number in the office lottery? ?
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018/12/219775/ayanna-pressley-shirley-chisholm-office-swap-katie-hill
schrodingers_cat
@Adam L Silverman: If I know anything, I am not telling.
Adam L Silverman
@schrodingers_cat: Ve haf vays uf maikink yu talq!
p.a.
You didn’t take advantage of their 0% credit card upgrade!
Ramalama
Please tell me that you, at the very least, are running the site on Cloudflare or also Akamai or Amazon AWS?
I work on wordpress sites for my croissants and buerre, when not pretending that my 1-page-a-day-writing (hey, my BA is in fiction, though it is Not a fictional BA) is my work.
If not, I will offer free and actionable and effective advice.
If so, I shall shutteth uppeth.
FlyingToaster
@Ramalama: I just looked (NoScript & Ghostery happily tell me here in the work browser), and nope.
Evap
I’m in India right now but I swear I had nothing to do with it!