Web Traffic Anomaly

Greg · 06-28-2007, 03:58 AM

Something weird happened on Sun Sims today. At this moment, the front page is showing: "Most users ever online was 45, Today at 03:35 PM."
That would be 3:35 PM US Central Daylight Time.

I noticed part of the anomaly when there were 26 users signed on, consisting of me and 25 guests; and 24 of the guests were reading the Rules and Community Standards. We sometimes have half a dozen folks surfing by at any one time but I've never seen much more than that, and nobody bothers to read the rules, so this is a really strange phenomenon. I don't know of any event elsewhere on the net that would have caused it.

What was that all about? A weak attempt at a denial-of-service attack? Did we get mentioned on slashdot? Did some Internet surfers get stuck in a standing wave? Perhaps a spammer testing IP masking? Have we blundered into a high ranking on some search engine?

What the heck would cause 45 people to suddenly want to read Sun Sims's rules?

Miros1 · 06-28-2007, 01:57 PM

The Sims community has suddenly become law abiding and wants to know the rules before they break them?

Might also be a web crawler or 40...

Greg · 06-28-2007, 05:52 PM

Yeah, it could have been a web crawler that had a glitch that caused it to launch a bunch of processes all at the same time. That's the only way I can think of that vBulletin would have recognized 40 visitors all reading the same topic.

shorty943 · 06-29-2007, 11:06 AM

I'd have to trawl through a few hundred security bulletins, but, I'm sure I recently skimmed over something about small scale DoS attacks. ZDNet, is my main font of news.
Might take an hour or 2, if I find it I'll post a link.

Edit.

Well that was easy.
Unless for some reason you have an Apple TV server up and running, That was the Dos warning.
Also an article about Russian mobs, hijacking about 5,000 Italian websites with "MPack", and redirecting traffic to drive-by malicious loaded sites.
Skeletons in Microsoft's update closet. Blah, blah. Google did this, Yahoo said that.

Greg · 07-06-2007, 10:06 PM

I suspect that if it was a DoS attack, it was very small scale; like maybe one or two Sims fans putting a lot of effort into something that produced no detectable result other than this thread. On the other hand, you never know what will trigger certain segments of the Sims community to be wildly indignant about something. Often I get the feeling that people hold clandestine meetings in hidden chat room to decide on the wild indignation du jour.

shorty943 · 07-07-2007, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg

I suspect that if it was a DoS attack, it was very small scale; like maybe one or two Sims fans putting a lot of effort into something that produced no detectable result other than this thread. On the other hand, you never know what will trigger certain segments of the Sims community to be wildly indignant about something. Often I get the feeling that people hold clandestine meetings in hidden chat room to decide on the wild indignation du jour.

Huh, tell me about it. There are quite a few very juvenile site populations.
Snide snappy little.......
Makes a greybeard want to smack arses.

I wonder if Ted Bullpit can help there. Ted was the lead character of a classic Aussie sit-com. No matter what, who, how, Ted had been upset, there was always a solution.
"Someone should blow such and such up". Was Ted's solution.

Probably a bit PIC, for minds these days.

Shorty.

Greg · 07-08-2007, 02:17 AM

Ah, if only we knew where to plant the dynamite...

06-28-2007, 03:58 AM	#1
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Web Traffic Anomaly Something weird happened on Sun Sims today. At this moment, the front page is showing: "Most users ever online was 45, Today at 03:35 PM." That would be 3:35 PM US Central Daylight Time. I noticed part of the anomaly when there were 26 users signed on, consisting of me and 25 guests; and 24 of the guests were reading the Rules and Community Standards. We sometimes have half a dozen folks surfing by at any one time but I've never seen much more than that, and nobody bothers to read the rules, so this is a really strange phenomenon. I don't know of any event elsewhere on the net that would have caused it. What was that all about? A weak attempt at a denial-of-service attack? Did we get mentioned on slashdot? Did some Internet surfers get stuck in a standing wave? Perhaps a spammer testing IP masking? Have we blundered into a high ranking on some search engine? What the heck would cause 45 people to suddenly want to read Sun Sims's rules? __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

06-28-2007, 05:52 PM	#3
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Yeah, it could have been a web crawler that had a glitch that caused it to launch a bunch of processes all at the same time. That's the only way I can think of that vBulletin would have recognized 40 visitors all reading the same topic. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

06-29-2007, 11:06 AM	#4
shorty943 Banned Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 805	I'd have to trawl through a few hundred security bulletins, but, I'm sure I recently skimmed over something about small scale DoS attacks. ZDNet, is my main font of news. Might take an hour or 2, if I find it I'll post a link. Edit. Well that was easy. Unless for some reason you have an Apple TV server up and running, That was the Dos warning. Also an article about Russian mobs, hijacking about 5,000 Italian websites with "MPack", and redirecting traffic to drive-by malicious loaded sites. Skeletons in Microsoft's update closet. Blah, blah. Google did this, Yahoo said that. Last edited by shorty943 : 06-29-2007 at 11:37 AM.

07-06-2007, 10:06 PM	#5
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	I suspect that if it was a DoS attack, it was very small scale; like maybe one or two Sims fans putting a lot of effort into something that produced no detectable result other than this thread. On the other hand, you never know what will trigger certain segments of the Sims community to be wildly indignant about something. Often I get the feeling that people hold clandestine meetings in hidden chat room to decide on the wild indignation du jour. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

07-08-2007, 02:17 AM	#7
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Ah, if only we knew where to plant the dynamite... __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

06-28-2007, 01:57 PM	#2
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	The Sims community has suddenly become law abiding and wants to know the rules before they break them? Might also be a web crawler or 40...