Sunday, December 2, 2018

We are still here

Dec. 2, 2018

Oh the games people play.

It seems someone sure wants to close down this blog and shut us up.

This morning we survived what appears to be a massive DNS flood, by far the worst we have yet to experience. We have been aware of attempts to censor us in the past, some through trying to employ attorneys, others through technical means.

We are still here. And if we lose this blog we will resurface elsewhere.

16 comments:

Year of the Cat said...

To give you an idea of the magnitude of the flood, the intrusion this morning which lasted about 90 minutes from what I can tell constitutes around 12% of the total recorded hits for the entire 3+ year history of this blog. And we are actually a pretty lively online place hit-wise.

We do have a history of scrapers from Russia and the Ukraine on an on-again off-again basis. Probably bots and we know how to shake them. We also receive many spam messages, which is why we need to moderate the comment section. But none of it is even close to this morning's invasion.

This new situation is unprecedented and serious enough that a couple of us consulted in person this morning, attempting to conduct some forensics over coffee.

Whoever was behind this went to great pains to cover their tracks and they came from several different directions at once. Like the post says, there are forces that have attempted to shut us down in the past but we don't know if any of these previous characters are behind this morning's attack.

Upon reflection I realize no one connected with POV is really together or technically intelligent enough to pull off such a caper.

So we are not pointing fingers or accusing since we need more evidence before doing so.

Year of the Cat said...

Someone in Germany has sure been working hard to bring us down the last few days.

Year of the Cat said...

Very suspicious hyoer-activity this morning, this time from someone in the USA.

Year of the Cat said...

Noted: Bombarded on Christmas evening from the USA. We've seen worse but this was significant.

Year of the Cat said...

Bombarded again this morning by I'm guessing bots from the USA. We have also been seeing a big increase of hits from UK and Singapore but those are within normal parameters. Also, a slight uptick in irate comments from POV cult victims.

Year of the Cat said...

During our brief vacation we were hit again on Jan. 4 by someone in the USA. We note the following day, Jan. 5, the fancy-pants new POV website was down all day. Probably coincidence. Wouldn't it be interesting if both POV and the critics were targeted by the same evil Bond villain, and it brought us adversaries together against a common cyber threat?

Year of the Cat said...

Well THAT was interesting. Feb. 10, 2020 between 3-5 pm Pacific Time. We've seen worse. And as you can see, we are still here.

Year of the Cat said...

Hit again, this time from Europe. 1 AM our time.

Year of the Cat said...

Week later again from Europe, in the afternoon Beach Boys time zone.

We are well aware of the other attempts to shut us down. Apparently the powers that be saw that our mission was legitimate and Spezzano's con game was documented.

Year of the Cat said...

Major attack from Germany this morning for about 15 minutes around 8 AM Pacific Time.

Year of the Cat said...

The Russians are screwing up our stats today big time at a rate more than usual. Expect to see lots of phrases from this blog appear on junk posts in the next couple weeks.

Year of the Cat said...

The Russians are back this morning big time. To see an example of how this blog is regurgitated by scrapers simply Google "Documents about Spezzano"

Year of the Cat said...

Dec. 25-26, Russians again.

Year of the Cat said...

Huge amount of scraper hits from Sweden this time, June 21-22. We are already seeing phrases from our posts showing up in new junk websites.

It is annoying because these trash sites clutter up the web and force the online researcher to separate the wheat from the chaff. I'm sure those who are active in merchandising POV feel the same way we do about it.


Year of the Cat said...

Under heavy attack by someone in the USA with a Mac.

Year of the Cat said...

It appears a second entity (human or machine), more cloaked, has joined the Mac person and now both are hitting this blog. So far all they are doing is increasing my hit stats.

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