Hey everyone,

It looks like somebody is having a little bit of fun with the SHS server--a whole bunch of requests are being sent to the download manager very rapidly, all attempting to download various files, do other things like simultaneously rating a whole bunch of entries, and so forth. Naturally, when someone attempts to download the same >100 MB file anwhere from 1 to 100 times every second, this places a little bit of strain on the server. When I block the individual IP addresses that’s doing this, a new IP starts attempting the same. (Yes, JC, you may add a dime to the “‘(D)DOS’ jar.")

Luckily, the downloads don’t stack up too much in terms of bandwidth since most of the file transfers actually don’t get through, but the MySQL reading/writing takes a beating.

I temporarily shut down the DM for all guests, which did bring us back to normal. A couple of the most frequent IP addresses have been blocked, as well. I’ve also set an individual download limit (which unfortunately due to the software is a bit buggy). Access is back up for everyone, though, and hopefully we’ll be alright for now.

- Seb.