The Catholic Message Board

We seem to have experienced a DOS attack for several hours this morning, and seem to be experiencing another tonight. To try to reclaim control I have removed guest access from most of the board. Hoping this works. In a couple of days maybe we can reinstate at least read only for a couple of the boards. For now, this is hopefully a fix for the 4k+ guests who are causing problems.

Sorry for any inconvenience. Again, hopefully it's temporary.

Thanks. Alarming to see 4,000 bots log in with me.

At least it is a DOS attack and not a Windows attack

Did you try banning Europe?

Always an option

It wouldn't have been enough. The "guests " come from Europe, Asia, South America...I gave up trying to make sense of it. Probably an out of control AI scraper.

We will see how the next few days go.

A denial of service attack makes me feel important. The traditional message board format has been dead for a while, killed first by the rise of blogs, then blogs were killed by media, and social media is being killed by podcasts. Attacking a messsage board seems so 2003.

One has to admire such conservatism.

I wouldn't be too flattered - I feel fairly sure it wasn't personal. Just an AI bot looking for data.

I take wins where I find them.

If there is credit being handed out, and y'all have some extra, I'd be glad to take it.

I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that I had trouble getting the site to load. A couple of times, the arrow kept circling around.

Highlander wrote: ↑Tue May 19, 2026 12:06 am If there is credit being handed out, and y'all have some extra, I'd be glad to take it.

https://youtu.be/WVvKnq5XT-g?si=GkDzcHQRMcbPKOFY

anawim wrote: ↑Tue May 19, 2026 5:07 am I wonder if that had anything to do with the fact that I had trouble getting the site to load. A couple of times, the arrow kept circling around.

Yes. Somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand we can't handle the traffic and experience slowness, 503 errors, etc. Restricting what guests can view without logging on seemed to help, even before the numbers dropped significantly.

It seems that just after the Air Force released the classified UFO files, computer issues soared. I wonder....

Remember: Shiny side out.

Obi-Wan Kenobi wrote: ↑Tue May 19, 2026 8:04 am

Highlander wrote: ↑Tue May 19, 2026 12:06 am If there is credit being handed out, and y'all have some extra, I'd be glad to take it.

https://youtu.be/WVvKnq5XT-g?si=GkDzcHQRMcbPKOFY

Thank you so much. I learned several new approaches to seek extra credit. The secret, it appears, is that the person holding the credit is to blame if I am not granted sufficient for my needs. Thus, if I don't go to confession, what are you going to do to rectify the state of my soul?

DW, in middle school, gave only one form of extra credit. Each week she posted an extra credit question on the blackboard. Each week, she collected the responses. Thus she provided @16 opportunities for extra credit. Of her @120 students, about 10 answered each week; all had already banked solid "A"s. At the end of the semester, many students would approach her and ask for extra credit. When she pointed out that they had ignored many opportunities for extra credit, she was met by responses ranging from blank stares (most common) to hostility. At the end of each semester, several parents approached her, demanding extra credit for their kid. Sometimes this escalated to conferences with the Principal. She explained her system. The typical response was that other teachers provided other forms of extra credit; why didn't she? Or that she had lost their child's responses and was lying about it. The common theme was that she was responsible for seeing that their kid did the extra credit work.

Every teacher I know loves that video.

I have had almost exactly that conversation perhaps as many as a dozen times

Guest view is "new normal." We'll see how it goes.