Internet Service

I doubt that it's anything specific to this forum. Sometimes, people will target specific sites, such as government sites or those of large online retailers. Others are more random, targeting networks, such as sites that are hosted with the same hosting company, which I believe is the case this time.

A DOS attack is intended to disrupt the the sites or networks being targeted. Every web site on the Internet has limitations as to how much traffic they can handle at any one time. Since we seldom have more than twenty-five people on this forum at any one time, I am not going to buy a hosting plan intended to accommodate thousands. In a DOS attack, real people aren't visiting the site but hundreds or thousands of computers are used to repeatedly ping a site, using the same resources that would be required to accommodate that many people accessing the site, although they don't show up in the statistics as site traffic. Web sites from governments and huge corporations are frequently taken down by DOS attacks.

A blunt force attack is intended to break into a site, usually for the purposes of hacking it. Similar to a DOS attack, they are automated, as a number of computers automatically try sequences of keyboard characters with the intention of eventually coming across the right sequence of characters necessary to access an administrative account.

Blunt force attacks sometimes show up as "guests" accessing the forum but if you click into the Member area that tells you what they are doing, the forum software will say that they are registering, simply because they are in that part of the forum. Although we are fairly well protected against blunt force attacks being successful, the repeated attempts have the same results as a DOS attack.

The owners of the computers used in blunt force or DOS attacks are usually not even aware that their computer and their Internet connections are being used in such a manner. When accessing some web sites, malware can be installed on a computer. One type of malware that may be surreptitiously installed on a computer are the programs that use these computers to conduct DOS or blunt force attacks, reporting back any successful results to the people behind the malware. Since a lot of people leave their computers on all the time, even when they are not being used, this malware may be set to activate only when the computer is idle, or it may work in the background while the computers are being used.

These attacks generally come from either Russia or China, although they may use computers throughout the world. People in the United States generally use anti-virus or anti-malware software that may prevent this malware from being installed, or detect it at some point, so we don't see as much of this coming from U.S.-based computers.

My guess is that DOS and hacking attempts that originate in China are state-sponsored, and that people there are not given the same control over what is or is not installed on their computers as we are here, although I am sure that our government has its hands in a lot of nefarious stuff as well. When I go into my hosting statistics, although these connections do not register with the forum software as visits, I can see thousands upon thousands of pings from Chinese locations every day, and not a small number of Russian pings as well, although recently most of them are coming from China.

A few months ago, I had a series of DOS attacks to my other forum that came mostly from Russia, but I think that pretty much the same situation probably applies there, that both Russia and China are involved in state-sponsored activities aimed at disrupting connections in the United States.

 

Although this is a small town, we have a few options for high-speed Internet service. When we first moved here, the only options were dial-up or satellite, so that has improved considerably. Although our speeds are not as high as can sometimes be found in much larger cities where competition is higher, it's okay. I have seen a pattern, however. When we change ISPs, we're usually doing that because our current service has gotten worse. I think there is a tendency for ISPs to oversell - then, especially in the evening and on weekends, when more people are online, the connections suck. We go through a series of complaints. They send someone out, sometimes changing one thing or another. Sometimes, the service will improve, but it's only temporary. Once we start having trouble, it never seems to get better long-term. I think they just speed us up for a week or two so that we'll shut up.

Once we've had enough, we sign up with another service, telling them that we're looking for better service than we're getting from our current ISP. They promise that, and they usually deliver. Most of the time, we'll be happy with the new ISP for a year or two before things start to slow. Then we're back in the same cycle, and the new ISP that we choose might be one that had used before, only now they'll give us better service for a year or two instead of a week or two.

This isn't quite as big of a problem now that we can use our phone connection as a hotspot. That seems to work well for Internet use but not for streaming. Despite the fact that they insist they are not doing so, I have no doubt that they throttle streaming after an hour because it seems to be exactly one hour that we can stream through our cell phone hotspot.

We still have to change ISPs every two or three years but we're not quite a desperate as we're going through the process.

 

I had satellite TV for a few years, and used to seem them on RFDTV. It's about the only station I miss.

 

Actually, my internet service is Verizon wireless with a monthly cap on the high speed amount.

My electric co-op is in the process of running fiber internet to every single customer. My area is due to get connected by the end of this year...I can't wait.

I'll get better internet and have some streaming tv available to me (there is no cable TV for those as remote as I...just satellite.)

 

Yeh, I got rid of satellite 5-6 years ago when a rescue dog I had yanked the cable out from the transducer head in the satellite dish, basically destroying it beyond repair. So I installed an antenna. Over 40 channels of free tv.