FA slowdowns

[Conan]

Earlier today and again right now FA has been experiencing major slowdowns causing the mainsite to grind to a halt. There isn't much information being released about this, but on the forums it's been tossed back and forth that it may or may not be a DDoS, and it might just be something internal.

EDIT: Yak just posted this:

FA is experiencing what seems to be another DDoS attack, though at this point we can not say that with an 100% certainty due to some parts of the nature of the attack being unclear. Essentially we're betting flooded with as many packets as our connection can deliver, but where they are coming from is yet unknown.

how do you not know where traffic is coming from?

[ColeTrain]

I bet they don't know what's causing the slowdown themselves. First they claimed it's just a network issue, then that some cable needed to be replaced, then all of sudden it's DDoS attack. Seriously, FA? Get someone competent and who knows how to handle these issues already.

[Jim Demintia]

Back in the old days when people didn't know what was wrong with their Apple machine (this was no later than the Old World PowerPC era), a common cure was to "reset the PRAM". Since Macs of that era were a weird voodoo fusion of the stone-age Macintosh Toolbox ROM and modern hardware like the PowerPC CPU and OpenFirmware BIOS, the boot process of these machines probably involved some rituals of the higher degrees of Freemasonry. Tl;dr- "Zapping the PRAM" is basically the PC equivalent of clearing the CMOS, and it grew to be a bit of a running joke among some that saying one should reset their PRAM was tantamount to "I have no fucking clue what's wrong" without really admitting you didn't know.

I think "oh, it's DDoS" is the Web 2.0 peanut gallery equivalent of "reset the PRAM".

[Pi]

Jim, I think I love you. (Also, I've got some kind of handle on the innards of the boot process on those things. It's pretty cthuhloid. (I've also tried to get Copland running on some real hardware, soooooo...))

And yeah, "oh, it's ddos" is kind of hard to determine from a user-facing standpoint.

From an administrative standpoint, you've really got to have a handle on how the network works. I heard a rumor that the FA admins are using my network diagram (y'know, the one I posted here, on this TROLL SITE) as an authoritative source, so I'm going to assume they don't know how their own network functions. Combined with the "we see packets but don't know where they're coming from", welp.

[Conan]

They've been under DDoS or whatever for something like 5 hours now. At one point they thought they smacked the router enough to stop it but apparently they failed.

Also, a tiny, tiny bug introduced when they started using SSL for logins still exists. It's been something like 10 months since this was first reported, and they're too fucking lazy to remove an extra 't' from the URL.

[Ben]

It's been about 10 hours now. I wonder how long the attackers can keep this up?

[Whitefang]

From what little i know witch is admittedly very little, so correct me if I'm wrong. But pretty much they can keep this up until they grow board of it and move on to do something else.

[loki]

This is nitpicking here but is it even a real DDoS or is just coming from a single source? I can understand them changing the attack vector on FA but wouldn't you have something to automatically cut off a connection if it's eating up all your bandwidth? That would be harder to prevent in a real DDoS since there's more than one source. I just wonder if it's that hard to stop or if it's just incompetence on their part?

[Jim Demintia]

Well, whoever's doing it is not exactly helping "the cause", as it were- the cocksucking on Twitter is insufferable.

Also, there are rumors of an "FA virus". Don't ask what that is; the answers will not clarify things. But apparently some of the drooling proletariat believe that FA has been infected with some kind of malware delivery vector. Of course, knowing the FA Forums crowd someone probably just got a virus from a hacked video game and believes FA is to blame.

(insert dialogue from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail "witch scene" here)

[AshleyAshes]

Well, it is worth noting that TWICE the forums themselves were delivering viruses.  I was the one to notice it each time. (After hours of trying to find the virus hijacking my browser, only to realize that it was FAF itself that was hijacked instead).  Caranath, in all his IT skill, promptly upgraded the forum software and made no effort to check if the update protected the forum from being infected agian.  It was back in like three days.  THEN he bothered to look at HOW the forums got infected with code made for IE and FF.

[Pi]

Insecure software administered insecurely by furries who don't have a single clue what they're doing? Say it ain't so!!!

[Conan]

This is comforting:

Paraphrasing what I was told, looks like the server handling searching decided to stop - and the only person *currently* awake doesn't have the permissions to restart it.

So, by the sounds of it, Yak is the only one that can reboot the search "server".

His involvement with FA gets more and more shady every day.

[ColeTrain]

This is comforting:

Paraphrasing what I was told, looks like the server handling searching decided to stop - and the only person *currently* awake doesn't have the permissions to restart it.

So, by the sounds of it, Yak is the only one that can reboot the search "server".

His involvement with FA gets more and more shady every day.

Found some rather interesting stories on Lulz- I know, not to be taken seriously but caught my attention:

Topic in question and reply which started it: http://www.lulz.net/furi/res/1500368.html#1500521

>> There are several believable theories that Yak is doing something shady with the servers. A number of weeks ago, the Database server's WWW server directed you to a Moldovian electronics retailer. Yak also lives in Moldova. He also has everyone's email address...

>> He has more of a deathgrip on FA than Dragoneer, he refuses to let other people touch the code, he refuses to let other people touch the hardware, he attempts to keep admin actions under a shroud of secrecy, and apparently he's even successfully threatened to ban Dragoneer from the site if he didn't get his way.

Since Yak just kind of appeared and started working for FA, I strongly believe that he originally found some major exploit and blackmailed FA into letting him work for them, and now he runs FA at his whims, demanding FA purchase new hardware while he does interesting things with the servers like redirects to Moldova and give his friends webspace (ASKCOW.NET is hosted on an FA server). Dragoneer can't get rid of him because Yak holds all the keys and could very easily delete everything should he even get wind that Dragoneer is considering letting him go.
Seriously? Who is Yak? Where did he come from? Nobody knows these things. Yet Dragoneer claims he's "solid" even though it's quite clear he fucks around and doesn't do much of anything. Quite suspicious.

Your opinions on this?

[Freehaven]

Considering the source, you definitely want to take all of that with a grain of salt.

Still, if it's even remotely true...fucking WOW.

[ColeTrain]

Considering the source, you definitely want to take all of that with a grain of salt.

Still, if it's even remotely true...fucking WOW.

I'm not really taking it seriously (I never took Lulz seriously), but you gotta admit it sounds plausible when you think a bit of all the details.
It's like watching Arcturus 2.0 happening.

[Pi]

I was going to write something up about askcow yesterday, but it looks like I slipped on that schedule. Hopefully I have something scrawled up tonight.

[Dima]

So I have jokingly referred to recent things on FA in a Metal Gear Solid conspiracy storyline light to my friends, but it has become ever more disquieting the closer to proximity the actual truth is getting to someone in FA Staff being in the Furry version of the Patriots.

[Jim Demintia]

Yak is obviously a  shitty programmer, an incompetent administrator, and lives half a world away from NoVA with few obvious connections to Dragoneer. Yet Neer trusts him like he's never trusted anyone with FA and is unwilling to change that or really show Yak who is in charge at the clear expense of FA.

Normally I'd say it's just another day in the world of Sean Piche but I do agree things; especially motives, do not add up here. If there is something skeevy going on, I wonder how much Dragoneer knows?

[ColeTrain]

Yak is obviously a  shitty programmer, an incompetent administrator, and lives half a world away from NoVA with few obvious connections to Dragoneer. Yet Neer trusts him like he's never trusted anyone with FA and is unwilling to change that or really show Yak who is in charge at the clear expense of FA.

Not to mention, Yak is confrontational, rude and snaps at the slightest sign of someone pointing out mistakes in what he does. Definitely not a behavior fit for administrator of a big site like FA.

[loki]

Little did we know Dragoneer is trapped in a shady web of mafioso warfare, ever forced to do the bidding of his Moldovan masters. If Yak does have something on Dragoneer it's probably either something personal or maybe he just borrowed a ton of money from Yak? It's all speculation but still it is strange why this website is run by a guy halfway across the world (especially a country like Moldova)

Maybe Dragoneer thinks Yak could have a hitman take him out?