If you have noticed periodic outages at Route 66 News in the past few weeks — especially this morning for nearly an hour — it’s because the website was subject to what appears to be brute-force attacks by other computers trying to hack into the site.
If I felt inclined to be humorous about it, I could say a few wisecracks about Russians, the Democratic National Committee and Donald Trump.
In actuality, it seems these attacks, based on one of my plug-in’s data, came from all over the globe — in particular China and, a few weeks ago, Ukraine.
I’m not sure why this is happening. I’m certain the website still is secure, but these attacks gum up the works for my host’s servers in the meantime. Fortunately, my Jetpack plug-in blunts some of the impact of these brute-force attacks. But the tsunami of visitors trying to get access to Route 66 News occasionally slows the site’s performance to a crawl or throws it offline for a few minutes.
I’ve emailed my host to see whether I can find a remedy. I suspect the vast majority of you readers have noticed nothing amiss. But if you do, there was a reason, and we’re trying to do something about it.
Thanks Ron. Always pleased to get the news. Peter, Bishopstone, England. (Done the full Route 66 trip in 2001 and 2006 and parts in 2011 AND 2012)
One of my friends was the head of a small-to-medium sized Public Library (in a community along ‘Route 66.’) She shared with me the saga of being hacked by some Chinese organization / nefarious group! Not only was the innocent library’s system messed-up but all of the fonts (in Asian / Oriental script) gave her a visual-tension headache. Whadda mess…
You gotta watch out for those Route 50 ruffians. They are trouble!
Ron,
No real problem on this end–we love all your posts!
One thing, for sure—it IS the new administration messing with our freedom of speech!
It will continue until they are gone!
Cheers,
Terry
Whatever pleasure hackers get from wreaking havoc from afar, I don’t understand. Imagine there’s no hackers, I wonder if you can?
I had similar problems with my web server over a period of almost one year. China and Ukraine was my biggest problem, too.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed and wish you good luck.
… and BTW … love your posts a lot and share them every day with my Facebook group Route 66 Travelers. They are inspiration for my trips along the Mother Road.