Today, like the past few days, we have had some downtime. Apparently some script kids are enjoying themselves by targeting our server (and others). Sorry for the inconvenience.
Most of these ‘attacks’ are targeted at the database, but some are more ddos-like and can be mitigated by using a CDN. Some other Lemmy servers are using Cloudflare, so we know that works. Therefore we have chosen Cloudflare as CDN / DDOS protection platform for now. We will look into other options, but we needed something to be implemented asap.
For the other attacks, we are using them to investigate and implement measures like rate limiting etc.
I was using voip.ms last year when they were DDoS’d for over a week, by a group demanding payment via anonymous crypto. The DDoS ended when they switched to CloudFlare (which was probably pretty difficult because they’re a SIP provider.)
Almost any website with a small number of servers is vulnerable to this attack, which happens to be great business for CloudFlare. I wonder which companies are most effectively competing with CloudFlare?
There are others, but I think the craziest thing about Cloudflare is its basic level of protection is free. Free, unmetered, DDOS protection. It’s so popular because so many hobbyists use it for free, and are familiar with it. Then they convince their workplaces to adopt it when the need arises because they are already familiar with it.
They make money by selling support to companies, and selling access to some more advanced features (that often have a free tier as well). It’s honestly so impressive, it made me wonder how much they actually make because it seems unnecessary for most to pay at all. Turns out they cleared almost a billion dollars in revenue in 2022.