Earlier today, we got a little attack from someone, called a DDoS, I’m telling this because several users came into IRC asking why they couldn’t get on wikiHow. The attack happened from 12:00 (EST) to 4:45 (EST) and the forums got a bit wiped out from 6:00 (EST) to 9:100 (EST) (Yes, I kept track). Thanks to out wonderful engineers, this problem has been mostly solved. You can read about what DDoS is here, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack
In short, it’s an attempt to make a website un-usable to intended users. Just a little news to anyone else about what’s going on, if you didn’t know already. Thanks to the people who helped fix it! =) June Days
Love2
2
o.O. Good thing that wikiHow got fixed
Thanks for the report @JuneDays
. You beat me too it.
It’s been a hard tough day at wikiHow, but the good news is that we think we have quelled the DDoS attack. (For now at least). That said, some parts of the site such as the Community Dashboard are still disabled. If you notice any other unusual problems with the site, can you please report them in this thread. Now the question I am left with is, why would someone want to take wikiHow offline? Is it a spammer we blocked who is angry? Or a troll? Or just someone who didn’t’ like our cupcakes recipe or something? I can’t understand why someone would do this.
I told a user (Jill? Or, someone…) today on IRC to…Think of it as kind of a compliment. Like, of course, feel free to beat me over the head with a stick as I said that, however, if we weren’t targeted by spammers, we wouldn’t be popular, now would we. On the other hand, there are mean people out there, and, I’ve learned through wikiHow, to be kind and assume good faith, and think, this’ll get better.
June Days
system
5
Changed the site notice for a Community Dashboard replacement a few hours ago. Lewis commented in IRC that the original message was breaking the top link bar in Chromium, so I had to tweak it. Feel free to change it back to the RC notice when it gets fixed… and thanks to all at the wikiHaus for fighting this screwed-up-in-the-head issue! (toolbar is still broken, but seriously doesn’t need to be fixed asap)
system
6
@Jack
It’s those cupcakes…
It seems like trollism to me.
I don’t know why someone would want to bring wikiHow down… WikiHow is awesome!
Zack
9
Some people perform destructive activities because they can.
Main page is probably under attack…June Days
system
11
Community Dashboard is back. Caveat: if things get bad again, we may have to turn it off again though! Reuben
system
13
OH, I’m glad I know, I wasn’t sure what was happening when I went on I was worried, but at least the community board is back! Too bad things like these happen quite a lot.
system
14
That is great that it is back to normal!
KommaH
15
People DDoS for trivial reasons all the time.
This pretty much sums it up.
Can’t get into the main site.
June Days
Yeah, working for me. I swear, it wasn’t working though. o.O June Days
This might get the engineers sweating, but perhaps it’s best we step up the site’s security features. It’s possible that more attacks may be on the way.
Let’s just hope these hackers are amateur and don’t move on to a more advanced form of hacking.
