forum high load

[eFestivals]

a couple of times this morning the server load has gone exceptionally high, and which has caused the "server busy" message to pop-up.

When the second period of high load happened, I switched the forums over so that only registered users could access them, while I investigated what the issue was.

I discovered that someone was attacking the forum, trying to trigger an already-patched vulnerability, and so I've blocked the IP address they were using and everything has been good since.

However, these sorts of attacks often come via 'botnet networks', where a random user's computer is taken over to make the attack, and so it's possible that further attacks will happen in the near future via other IP addresses (until they give up and go away), and requiring the server to be switched over again to registered users only while the issue is sorted out.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

Edited June 5, 2014 by eFestivals

[Babyquack]

Hey Neil,

Just to let you know I just got the 'Oops, something went wrong' page just now so I don't know if it's back to normal yet.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Cheers,

Cein.