We experienced a massive attack on the website this morning, and the site was offline for several hours while the attack continued. To mitigate the attack, we changed the Cloudflare setup so that it challenges all connections to the website. This defeats these types of attack, but it means that when you connect to our site, you will see a Cloudflare verification screen before accessing Stovebolt. We may disable this in a while, once we're certain the attack has ceased, but it will be reimplemented if it resumes.
We also added a rate limiting rule that should stop these types of attack going forward.
We want to thank you again for your patience while we deal with these unexpected issues. The internet has changed a lot, and some of it not for the better. I have no idea why someone(s) is attacking us, but the reasons don't matter. W'e're working hard to ensure that these problems don't affect us in the future.
As one example, we added a block for Meta Ireland yesterday. So far, over 202,000 connections have been blocked. I have no idea why Meta (which is Facebook) feels the need to hammer out site, but they won't be doing it any longer.
Lot of Facebook users on our site. Lots of Market place ads on SB.
~ Peggy M 1949 Chevrolet 3804 "Charlie" - The Stovebolt Flagship In the Gallery "We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give." -- Winston Churchill
I'm going to show you what's been going on with Stovebolt. Look at this graph. Unique visitors began skyrocketing at about 6AM. It has remained that way ever since, but Cloudflare is handling it, which is why we still have access to the site. Best decision we've ever made. Had we not gone onto Cloudflare, the site would be down right now. The second graphic shows you how many attacks have been blocked. In six days.
