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[fatness]

Matt asked me about your block, @fatness - what did the block screen look like?

I didn't take a screenshot. In retrospect I wish I had. I think it was just some large broken letters, like a page that was trying to display but could not. It was not a formal block screen like the one @Soulfly3 posted in the topic in the Shark Pool. He's outside the US.
Next time it happens I'll screenshot it since I now know that can be informative. Thanks for your work on all this mess.

edited to add the warning screen @Soulfly3 got: https://i.imgur.com/AXvXLFW.png

 

[Instinctive]

What the **** is there to gain by DDOSing the football guys forums...

 

[QuizGuy66]

What the **** is there to gain by DDOSing the football guys forums...

Purse people bided their time....
-QG

 

[Soulfly3]

Matt asked me about your block, @fatness - what did the block screen look like?

I didn't take a screenshot. In retrospect I wish I had. I think it was just some large broken letters, like a page that was trying to display but could not. It was not a formal block screen like the one @Soulfly3 posted in the topic in the Shark Pool. He's outside the US.
Next time it happens I'll screenshot it since I now know that can be informative. Thanks for your work on all this mess.

edited to add the warning screen @Soulfly3 got: https://i.imgur.com/AXvXLFW.png

Yup, Joe closed the thread (it wasn't a shark pool topic, but I needed eyes on it)

I'm unable to access the website from anywhere outside the USA... Using a VPN or not using a VPN... Unless I select a USA IP address, we're blocked from accessing the site completely.

Been happening, that I've noted since yesterday (15/12) at 8am my time (2am EST for you guys). Worked fine every day prior @Memphis Foundry

ETA: This is my "block screen" from any country outside USA (canada, France, etc) ---> Block Screen

 

[The Z Machine]

Matt asked me about your block, @fatness - what did the block screen look like?

I didn't take a screenshot. In retrospect I wish I had. I think it was just some large broken letters, like a page that was trying to display but could not. It was not a formal block screen like the one @Soulfly3 posted in the topic in the Shark Pool. He's outside the US.
Next time it happens I'll screenshot it since I now know that can be informative. Thanks for your work on all this mess.

edited to add the warning screen @Soulfly3 got: https://i.imgur.com/AXvXLFW.png

Yup, Joe closed the thread (it wasn't a shark pool topic, but I needed eyes on it)

I'm unable to access the website from anywhere outside the USA... Using a VPN or not using a VPN... Unless I select a USA IP address, we're blocked from accessing the site completely.

Been happening, that I've noted since yesterday (15/12) at 8am my time (2am EST for you guys). Worked fine every day prior @Memphis Foundry

ETA: This is my "block screen" from any country outside USA (canada, France, etc) ---> Block Screen

Same result for me. My Swiss IP is blocked but I can use a VPN with USA IP and get through. At least I confirm my VPN is working...

 

[Joe Bryant]

Matt asked me about your block, @fatness - what did the block screen look like?

I didn't take a screenshot. In retrospect I wish I had. I think it was just some large broken letters, like a page that was trying to display but could not. It was not a formal block screen like the one @Soulfly3 posted in the topic in the Shark Pool. He's outside the US.
Next time it happens I'll screenshot it since I now know that can be informative. Thanks for your work on all this mess.

edited to add the warning screen @Soulfly3 got: https://i.imgur.com/AXvXLFW.png

Yup, Joe closed the thread (it wasn't a shark pool topic, but I needed eyes on it)

I'm unable to access the website from anywhere outside the USA... Using a VPN or not using a VPN... Unless I select a USA IP address, we're blocked from accessing the site completely.

Been happening, that I've noted since yesterday (15/12) at 8am my time (2am EST for you guys). Worked fine every day prior @Memphis Foundry

ETA: This is my "block screen" from any country outside USA (canada, France, etc) ---> Block Screen

For anything in future that you feel "needs eyes on it", please go here and open a ticket. https://sportsguys.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Thanks.

 

[Joe Bryant]

What the **** is there to gain by DDOSing the football guys forums...

Same question we've been asking.

And as @Memphis Foundry said, thanks for the patience as we work through it.

Yes, the countermeasures have primarily inconvenienced folks outside the US. I apologize for that and we're going to begin rolling those restrictions back tomorrow.

Yesterday, we were seeing bot attacks coming in from more than 90 countries, but relatively few from within the US. So practically all the anti-bot friction worked against international users.

We're still seeing sustained levels of attack today. So it looks like we'll be running at a higher security level for the foreseeable future. Tomorrow we'll begin deliberately making it easier for our folks who are locked out to access the forums.

I get some people see that as . We don't. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope to get things back to normal as soon as possible. In the meantime, we'll keep trying as hard as we caan to keep the forums operating at a good speed.

 

[Joe Bryant]

I have to now VPN to a US IP address to access the site

My IP address was blocked from accessing the forums for about a day last week. Yet I could access the forums just fine by VPN, log in, read and post just fine. I did write to [email protected] about the issue and was in the process of answering Matt's questions when the problem resolved itself. There was a Cloudfare outage around the same time; I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not.
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...flation-ftse-pound-business-live-news-updates

In talking to others on channels outside of these forums... it seems like most non-US users aren't able to reach the site anymore, I'm assuming part of their "solution" (not necessarily saying FBG, maybe the host/cloudflare, whoever) was to limit IP addresses from certain parts of the world.

Yes, the countermeasures have primarily inconvenienced folks outside the US. I apologize for that and we're going to begin rolling those restrictions back tomorrow.

Yesterday, we were seeing bot attacks coming in from more than 90 countries, but relatively few from within the US. So practically all the anti-bot friction worked against international users.

We're still seeing sustained levels of attack today. So it looks like we'll be running at a higher security level for the foreseeable future. Tomorrow we'll begin deliberately making it easier for our folks who are locked out to access the forums.

Thanks for all your work on this.

 

[Soulfly3]

Matt asked me about your block, @fatness - what did the block screen look like?

I didn't take a screenshot. In retrospect I wish I had. I think it was just some large broken letters, like a page that was trying to display but could not. It was not a formal block screen like the one @Soulfly3 posted in the topic in the Shark Pool. He's outside the US.
Next time it happens I'll screenshot it since I now know that can be informative. Thanks for your work on all this mess.

edited to add the warning screen @Soulfly3 got: https://i.imgur.com/AXvXLFW.png

Yup, Joe closed the thread (it wasn't a shark pool topic, but I needed eyes on it)

I'm unable to access the website from anywhere outside the USA... Using a VPN or not using a VPN... Unless I select a USA IP address, we're blocked from accessing the site completely.

Been happening, that I've noted since yesterday (15/12) at 8am my time (2am EST for you guys). Worked fine every day prior @Memphis Foundry

ETA: This is my "block screen" from any country outside USA (canada, France, etc) ---> Block Screen

For anything in future that you feel "needs eyes on it", please go here and open a ticket. https://sportsguys.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Thanks.

Ya, had no idea where to find that, so figured short term, shark pool would get eyes on it and eventually redirected where it needed to go.

anyways, Ill connect via vpn for now... not a huge inconvenience, but i just always forget to activate it and just have to refresh. it is what it is.

that said, I assume they know the site contains a ton of email addresses and perhaps (in their eyes) financial data for subscribers. makes sense in some ways they target here, but it stinks

 

[The Kerminator]

What the **** is there to gain by DDOSing the football guys forums...

Probably someone who started Quinshon Judkins in their playoffs

 

[Mrs. Rannous]

that said, I assume they know the site contains a ton of email addresses and perhaps (in their eyes) financial data for subscribers. makes sense in some ways they target here, but it stinks

That would require hacking and stealing, not a DNS attack.

 

[Joe Bryant]

Matt asked me about your block, @fatness - what did the block screen look like?

I didn't take a screenshot. In retrospect I wish I had. I think it was just some large broken letters, like a page that was trying to display but could not. It was not a formal block screen like the one @Soulfly3 posted in the topic in the Shark Pool. He's outside the US.
Next time it happens I'll screenshot it since I now know that can be informative. Thanks for your work on all this mess.

edited to add the warning screen @Soulfly3 got: https://i.imgur.com/AXvXLFW.png

Yup, Joe closed the thread (it wasn't a shark pool topic, but I needed eyes on it)

I'm unable to access the website from anywhere outside the USA... Using a VPN or not using a VPN... Unless I select a USA IP address, we're blocked from accessing the site completely.

Been happening, that I've noted since yesterday (15/12) at 8am my time (2am EST for you guys). Worked fine every day prior @Memphis Foundry

ETA: This is my "block screen" from any country outside USA (canada, France, etc) ---> Block Screen

For anything in future that you feel "needs eyes on it", please go here and open a ticket. https://sportsguys.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Thanks.

Ya, had no idea where to find that, so figured short term, shark pool would get eyes on it and eventually redirected where it needed to go.

anyways, Ill connect via vpn for now... not a huge inconvenience, but i just always forget to activate it and just have to refresh. it is what it is.

that said, I assume they know the site contains a ton of email addresses and perhaps (in their eyes) financial data for subscribers. makes sense in some ways they target here, but it stinks

Zero financial info. We don't store any of that.

I think it's less about trying to hack things and more about trying to machine learn question and answer and discussion. We have bot accounts that post several times a week. We do what we can to screen and not allow them to sign up but some get through.

The way to solve that is for you folks to report when you see them and we can ban them. And y'all do a great job with that. But even that probably "teaches" the people who are sending them.

Weird world.

 

[Memphis Foundry]

Yeah, we haven't received a ransom demand, so my best guess is it's some startup/upstart AI group grabbing conversational human content to train their model. We have a lot of that. Our guys at xenForo are seeing a lot more of the community forums they host getting hit.

The days of hacking for fun are gone. It's only done for profit now.

 

[Soulfly3]

if you care to know, got a weird human verification screen, and it allowed me back onto the forum, using my French IP.

 

[Memphis Foundry]

Thank you for letting me know, @Soulfly3 - we lowered the shields enough so that the vast majority of humans who were getting completely blocked yesterday should now be getting the human challenge screen. Now we're observing the impact.

 

[waiver wire]

i was blocked for accessing the forums for 2 days

 

[Don Quixote]

Yeah, we haven't received a ransom demand, so my best guess is it's some startup/upstart AI group grabbing conversational human content to train their model. We have a lot of that. Our guys at xenForo are seeing a lot more of the community forums they host getting hit.

The days of hacking for fun are gone. It's only done for profit now.

Poor AI is going to think the basic human conversation involves a lot of ranking of songs by artists that were at peak popularity in the 60s or 70s.

Maybe it will tell folks to PM Shuke for the answer to their questions.

 

[Scoresman]

Yeah, we haven't received a ransom demand, so my best guess is it's some startup/upstart AI group grabbing conversational human content to train their model. We have a lot of that. Our guys at xenForo are seeing a lot more of the community forums they host getting hit.

The days of hacking for fun are gone. It's only done for profit now.

Poor AI is going to think the basic human conversation involves a lot of ranking of songs by artists that were at peak popularity in the 60s or 70s.

Maybe it will tell folks to PM Shuke for the answer to their questions.

Really curious which way this AI will vote in the eatoff.

 

[Atomic Punk]

I was blocked for a few days, sent in a ticket and now back this morning. Help support did their magic!