BOT Wars Followup

[webmaster]

You may have noticed that when opening and browsing this site you'll now occasionally see a splash page which shows that a security check is verifying that you are a "human", and not a BOT or other automated attacker. You may also start to see this security page on other sites as they are forced to add this protection. This IS NOT a malicious page or sign of a virus infection. It is the opposite. It is a security service from Cloudflare with tools to stop the BOTS and DDoS attacks that have at times slowed this site to a crawl.

When I first added Cloudflare a few weeks ago I enabled a low level of protection and it seemed to work good enough to reduce the BOTS and make the site functional again. Apparently the BOTS found a way around that protection and by last weekend the site was often unusable.

This image below from a few minutes ago shows how dramatic the BOT attacks were. The normal amount of visitors on the site is a few hundred (140 right now) yet at 2:45 AM on the 1st the forum counted over 33,000 visitors. At that time of day there are usually only a few people on the site. Almost all of the 33,000 visitors were BOTS and the server couldn't handle the load.

I've now maxed out the protection and it is working very well. The loads on the server caused by the bots have now returned to normal. I'm still learning about the tools I have available through Cloudflare and may make some adjustments to see what their effect is. It has a setting to allow what they've identified as "safe" BOTS like legitimate search engines. I'm going to try that and see what happens. I'll try not to mess anything up! :-)

Don

[TomC]

Thanks - what is the purpose of the bots - or more accurately - what is the objective of the human instigators of these attacks?

[8gv]

Maybe to stimulate the anti-bot software sales?

[thinkxingu]

Don,
Tapatalk is not working—is that a consequence of this new bot-protection?

Thanks!

[webmaster]

Originally Posted by TomC

Thanks - what is the purpose of the bots - or more accurately - what is the objective of the human instigators of these attacks?

The Wikipedia article I linked to has a pretty good description of what the BOTs are up to. To me it looks like they are trying to register and post on comment boards, forums and other social media for purposes like placing ads, links and opinions. They now use AI to create posts. They have always been around but why they have become a flood is a mystery to me. I guess we'd have to ask the Chinese about it. It seems like they are encouraging BOT blocking by doing this. I read that about half of all internet traffic is now bots.

[jeffk]

Thanks for keeping us up running and funning!!

[BroadHopper]

This morning it seems like it takes longer to download a page. Then it quickly display the page. Going forward or backward is quick! Not sure what's going on. Happens only at this site for the moment. Any suggestions? I do have 500GB and fast AX router and card. Only thing I have in mind is a possible conflict between Cloudfare and Quad9?

[FlyingScot]

Hi Don,

So bummed for you to have to deal with this. Pages still very slow today, so I assume this is cat and mouse. Maybe it would help if you forced all visitors to join as members before allowing them to the rest of the site?

[thinkxingu]

Originally Posted by thinkxingu

Don,
Tapatalk is not working—is that a consequence of this new bot-protection?

Thanks!

Tapatalk is working again, and fast right now.

Sent from my SM-S931U using Tapatalk

[Winilyme]

Originally Posted by FlyingScot

Hi Don,

So bummed for you to have to deal with this. Pages still very slow today, so I assume this is cat and mouse. Maybe it would help if you forced all visitors to join as members before allowing them to the rest of the site?

It would be sad having to resort to this. I suspect being able to visit the site, navigate it and learn what it can offer is how newbies take the initiative to sign-up in the first place. Most casual browsers will be turned off if they have to sign-up first and, as a result, they leave and we miss the opportunity to initiate new members that contribute.

As it is, the forum already places off limits some aspects of the site...such as initiating new threads I believe or clicking on member profiles??? Still, you have to build a bench to ensure the long term viability of the forum; and a lot of teams (forums) are competing for those players.

[John Mercier]

You mean for non-members?
Because members can do all that.

[Winilyme]

Originally Posted by John Mercier

You mean for non-members?
Because members can do all that.

Yes, that’s what I mean.

[John Mercier]

Expanding the community is a noble effort.

I thought maybe the site navigation, as it has a lot of features, might be the issue.

I found joining very easy.

[Winilyme]

I’m not suggesting it’s difficult. Only that most people join because they like an experience as opposed to joining to see if they’ll like an experience.

[webmaster]

After a learning curve and tuning Cloudflare and the server the Bots have been held to a reasonable level and the site has been working well so I'm closing this thread.