Downtime

[Thorburn]

The Web Services - and with them Skadi Forum - have been down for the last 8 hours due to technical issues on the server level.

My apologies for any inconvenience this has caused.

Kind regards,

- Thorburn

[Thorburn]

The whole Skadi server was cut off for three days from the Internet by our uplink due to (repeated) extensive spamvertizing by apparently well-meaning members.

Having been on a journey, I only had learned about this today, and thus could only make now arrangements to have the server reconnected. Please do not spamvertize (= unsolicited bulk-advertizing via email) this server, this forum, or any of the server's services.

Our uplink has zero tolerance for this, and in the worst case scenario all services would be permanently suspended.

I saw that Loki was so kind to create a temporary discussion forum during Skadi's downtime ( on http://www.forums.skadi.net ). As it is technically impossible to merge or synchronize the databases, however, I would ask every author to copy & paste articles he desires to have preserved from the Nordish forum to Skadi forum.

Kind regards,

- Thorburn

[Braveheart]

So what you're saying is that someone sent out thousands of emails essentially saying, "Come visit www.skadi.net"? And for that your host deactivated this website? That's ridiculous becase you yourself cannot control what anyone else does. For example, I could chose to send out thousands of emails advertising this site, and I could do so without your knowledge or consent. So, why should you then be punished for something I did out of my own free will?

[Thorburn]

So what you're saying is that someone sent out thousands of emails essentially saying, "Come visit www.skadi.net"? And for that your host deactivated this website? That's ridiculous becase you yourself cannot control what anyone else does. For example, I could chose to send out thousands of emails advertising this site, and I could do so without your knowledge or consent. So, why should you then be punished for something I did out of my own free will?

Yes, that is what I am saying, and that is why we were just cut off for the second time. A Nigerian money fraud chain letter, sent to thousands of people, carried the URL to an article on our forum. Our upstream provider received six complaints and we were disconnected for another day. Needless to say that neither we, nor any of our services' users had anything to do with it. Ridiculous? Yes. - Unfair? Yes. - But that are the rules of our uplink, and we did not make them. Obviously, anyone can spamvertize his site and pretend he has nothing to do with it. Spam is a real problem, and that way our uplink wants to keep it under control. I hope the site will stay up for now...

My special thanks and regards to Sigrun for having negotiated the reconnection.

- Thorburn

[Thorburn]

We are currently reconfiguring the server. Additional brief downtime periods might occur within the next days.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Aeternitas]

Unfortunately, the Althing has suffered a DDoS attack today. This is the first time that the Althing has suffered an attack. Fortunately, we had a recent backup available and we have been able to restore the forum from it. Since the backup was a day old, some of the recent posts, reputation points, PMs and everything else from the last day have been lost. The members who have registered during this time will also have to re-register. We apologize for the inconvenience.

[MockTurtle]

This could be a pointless question, but is there any means of knowing the reasons behind the attack or who is responsible?

Just asking out of curiosity.

[Brynhild]

Well, that explains a few things, including a thread that I lost.

Glad I didn't abuse anybody...... LOL

[Siebenbürgerin]

Hmm, this was unfortunate. I was wondering what happened yesterday. I was planning to spend a little time on the forum since it was Sunday and I had more time. Now some of my posts have been lost for sure. But at least not much data was lost after this attack. Thank you, Aeternitas.

P.S. I'm wondering if the author of this low behaviour can be found? He should be reported because hacking is illegal everywhere.

[Aeternitas]

Unfortunately it's nearly impossible to locate the source. A botnet was used for the attack.

If a machine receives a denial-of-service attack from a botnet, few choices exist. Given the general geographic dispersal of botnets, it becomes difficult to identify a pattern of offending machines, and the sheer volume of IP addresses does not lend itself to the filtering of individual cases.

The reasons could be various, either someone hates the Althing, or they were bored or experimenting how to kill servers, etc., we don't know.