resolved Problems on the forum

[Silver_Dragon]

Greetings

As some of you may have noticed, there are problems with the forum, and I'm not surprised there are also issues with the ED website. I mentioned it to the moderators a few hours ago, and they told me they've been under attack for several hours. Checking occasionally, the number of visitors (guests) to the forum has jumped from 10,000 at 13:00 UTC to around 26,000 at 16:00 UTC. I suspect they're attempting a DDoS attack.

Have you had any problems? There are several areas of the forum that I can't access.

[GrafRotz]

35863 @1640UTC

seems getting worse, but no effect on my side.

[Silver_Dragon]

Has down to bellow 6000 at 17:15 UTC

[Mar28]

I have to log in to get access the forum , it wasn't so yesterday.

[Rudel_chw]

1 minute ago, Mar28 said:

I have to log in to get access the forum , it wasn't so yesterday.

 

Most likely its to prevent (or at least alleviate) the denial-of-service attacks, only registered users can view the forum content .. it doesn't bother me.

Now it seems the Forum Admin is rebuilding the Forum index, maybe it got corrupted during the attack ... unfortunately a search index rebuild takes a long time, probably over a dozen hours.

[BIGNEWY]

Hi all, 

we have already taken steps to make it more difficult for the attacker. 

Forum is currently indexing so may be slower than usual, and we have enforced login to browse the forums. 

thank you 

[GregP]

I'm sure I'm in a very small minority on this, but if making the forum require a login just to read becomes a permanent change, it is likely going to end my 20-year DCS 'career'.  My job only allows 'read-only' access to websites and if I can now no longer read the forums during the day, and thereby stay current on all the issues and products I'm interested in, I'll likely continue to shift all of my simming time and money into competing sims that don't have this restriction. 

Edited Thursday at 02:34 PM by GregP

[joker62]

On 11/19/2025 at 6:51 PM, BIGNEWY said:

Forum is currently indexing so may be slower than usual, and we have enforced login to browse the forums.

Ok, thanks for the explanation. I thought something unpleasant had happened to my phone and PC. It's not very convenient for me to login every time, and I don't like being logged in all the time. However, if this's for the security of the forum and its members, I'm happy to comply.

[BIGNEWY]

19 hours ago, GregP said:

I'm sure I'm in a very small minority on this, but if making the forum require a login just to read becomes a permanent change, it is likely going to end my 20-year DCS 'career'.  My job only allows 'read-only' access to websites and if I can now no longer read the forums during the day, and thereby stay current on all the issues and products I'm interested in, I'll likely continue to shift all of my simming time and money into competing sims that don't have this restriction. 

Would be a shame to see you go but you of course need to decide for yourself. The step was taken to ensure the forums can still be used while we were being attacked, the admin team will decide if and when we take the login restriction off. 

thank you 

 

[Silver_Dragon]

20 hours ago, GregP said:

Estoy seguro de que soy de los pocos que piensan así, pero si el requisito de iniciar sesión para leer el foro se convierte en un cambio permanente, probablemente acabará con mis 20 años de trayectoria en DCS. En mi trabajo solo tengo acceso de lectura a las páginas web, y si ya no puedo leer los foros durante el día y, por lo tanto, mantenerme al día sobre todos los temas y productos que me interesan, probablemente seguiré dedicando todo mi tiempo y dinero a simuladores de la competencia que no tienen esta restricción. 

Has many app on your smartphone, as Tapatalk and others.

[Kang]

I noticed this week that even reading the forums now requires a user login. Is there a reason for that?

While it obviously isn't a huge deal, I found myself looking at the forums less now, as I would have once in a while otherwise in a quick break.

[AdrianL]

The forums was/is under  DDOS attack

See 

 

 

[Kang]

Ah, thanks. Didn't make the connection to that thread title.

[BIGNEWY]

threads merged, 

sorry for the inconvenience with the enforced login. Hopefully it is temporary. 

[Cab]

There seems to be an unusually high number of new accounts joining the forum. Makes me wonder if it's related to this topic.

[waterman]

30 minutes ago, Cab said:

There seems to be an unusually high number of new accounts joining the forum. Makes me wonder if it's related to this topic.

Hold on tight 

I thought that too - I might be wrong    it seams like a bot   might be setting up fake user accounts.

Just looks like something is wrong !

If it is then the Ai bot can start asking fake credible questions using all of those fake accounts who would know if its real or not.

Also the bot could answer users questions with fake destructive advice .

The bot could also reply to its own questions using its thousands of accounts and totally jam up the forum to create a denial of service !

         

 

 

[AndyJWest]

1 hour ago, waterman said:

Hold on tight 

I thought that too - I might be wrong    it seams like a bot   might be setting up fake user accounts.

Just looks like something is wrong !

If it is then the Ai bot can start asking fake credible questions using all of those fake accounts who would know if its real or not.

Also the bot could answer users questions with fake destructive advice .

The bot could also reply to its own questions using its thousands of accounts and totally jam up the forum to create a denial of service !

         

In effect, this is already happening over large parts of the internet, though without DoS, or intentional destructive advice (on DCS at least) as an intended consequence.  The volume of AI-generated content has been increasing almost exponentially, and was estimated to have exceeded human-generated content some months back. And since LLMs are continually trawling the internet for new 'data' to feed through their word-guessing algorithms, they are essentially feeding off each others vomit, adding layers of hallucination on hallucination. Needless to say, this acts as a disincentive to human input, and could well result in the bots having the whole thing to themselves if left unregulated.

[BJ55]

On 11/20/2025 at 3:34 PM, GregP said:

My job only allows 'read-only' access to websites

Consider yourself lucky, most of employees around the world have no unauthorized access at all. Btw, better having enforced login than use Cloudflare's MiTM mass surveillance, since most of the time it's broken.

[BIGNEWY]

Forum login restriction lifted. 

We will continue to monitor the attacks on the forum and adjust login policy if it requires it in the future. 

thank you and sorry for any inconvenience.