Forced to require login for read access

[joepal]

Ok, so this is a move of desperation. Due to the onslaught of misbehaving AI bots, I've been forced to require login even for read access to most forum sections.

This is nothing I wanted, but the forum was inacessible for long periods due to the constant DDOS from the scrapers. We're talking a constant traffic of 10-20 hits per second, which caused mysqld to have an average load of above 95% cpu.

If they had respected robots.txt, this would not need to happen. But they don't.

[joepal]

Well, it had a visible effect, but it didn't help completely. The bots keep hammering the few remaining open parts of the forum. I don't really see the gain in loading the same page again and again.

I'll give it some time to see if they give up. Otherwise I'll have to either shut down the forum or block entire A blocks of the internet from accessing.

[joepal]

Having firewalled 500+ entire B net ranges (x.x.0.0/16), the mysqld daemon is below 25% cpu load. This is bound to have hit legitimate users though, so it's by no means desirable.

Looking at the firewall stats, one can get an idea of the load. This is about five minutes worth of blocked traffic:

Code: Select all

 ...
 1000 60000 DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.167.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 1030 61800 DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.161.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 1215 72900 DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       113.162.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 1242 74520 DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       113.177.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 1326 79560 DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       113.178.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 1420 85200 DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       222.253.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 1460 87600 DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       222.254.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 1692  102K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       222.252.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 1802  108K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.226.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 2031  122K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.248.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 2134  128K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       179.0.0.0/8          0.0.0.0/0           
 2207  132K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.162.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 2360  142K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       113.190.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 2634  158K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       123.16.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 2670  160K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.232.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 2725  164K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.177.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 2889  173K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       123.24.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 3191  191K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.231.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 3235  194K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.187.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 3375  203K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       177.0.0.0/8          0.0.0.0/0           
 3698  222K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       123.21.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 3868  232K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       113.172.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 3965  238K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       113.173.0.0/16       0.0.0.0/0           
 4007  240K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       123.20.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 4699  282K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.186.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
 4924  295K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.169.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0           
17973  877K DROP       tcp  --  ens3   *       14.191.0.0/16        0.0.0.0/0


The first column is the number of blocked access attempts, the second the amount of data.

[punkduck]

Hi

I know that crap, in the end only geo-blocking helps.
I checked a few.

14.0.0.0 and 113.0.0.0 are Chinese and partly Vietnam.
You can block these class A ranges completely.

I guess this is the only way. Seems these idiots already do their own warfare.
Well then they better do not play with nude Makehumans, they better listen to the big Chinese emperor to get information of what is good or bad.

So let us put our great firewall just after their great firewall.

Greetings, Punk