this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025

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Meta (lemm.ee)

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251

2025-03-15 Unplanned lemm.ee downtime (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by sunaurus@lemm.ee to c/meta@lemm.ee

50 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey folks!

For the past few hours, lemm.ee has been bombarded with abnormal (almost definitely automated) traffic from a range of different IP addresses. This managed to overwhelm our servers, and we were offline for the past hour or so.

I was in the middle of celebrating my birthday, so response was a bit slow, but I believe we are recovering now, with mitigations in place to try and prevent further issues. Some of you may be inconvenienced by some bot checks when you browse lemm.ee, I am sorry about that, but it's necessary for now.

Sorry for the issues and I hope you have a nice weekend ahead!

top 50 comments

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[–] gregs_gumption@lemm.ee 70 points 1 month ago

Thanks for the work, happy birthday!

[–] Fiction@lemm.ee 35 points 1 month ago

Thank you! Happy birthday!

[–] kestrelx@lemm.ee 29 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday!

[–] aeharding@vger.social 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

❤️

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Your name is a different color in my client. Why is that?

[–] aeharding@vger.social 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)

bc I made your client

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

No way…

Frantically looks up the app.

Wow. Ah, Nice job. Thanks. I spend a lot of time using it every day.

[–] notanapple@lemm.ee 11 points 1 month ago

He is the CEO of lemmy.

[–] You_are_dust@lemm.ee 20 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday! And thanks for working on that so quickly especially on your birthday.

[–] makingrain@lemm.ee 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Just enjoy your birthday! Sweet 21.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Really, they’re 21 and managing such a large instance? Impressive. Is that true?

[–] sunaurus@lemm.ee 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Definitely not 😄

[–] oddspinnaker@lemm.ee 11 points 1 month ago

Well you don’t look a day over 21…

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 month ago

We've been dealing with these too at lemmy.ml, don't sweat it, we'll figure it out. Happy bday! Hope it was a good one.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday!

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

We saw a brief similar traffic spike approximately an hour ago, but it dropped off pretty quick. It seemed to focus on our mlmym front end and briefly overloaded our backends for a minute.

All the suspicious ips I've checked so far, are owned by chinese cloud providers (huawei, alibaba, tencent, etc)

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 12 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday! 🎂

[–] Technoworcester@lemm.ee 12 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday! Thanks for all your hard work.

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 12 points 1 month ago

Suspicious timing considering that we have had a large reddit influx.

[–] RagingHungryPanda@lemm.ee 11 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday!

[–] Lojcs@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday!

[–] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday!!! <3

[–] Vyvanse@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago

Thank you for taking time out of your birthday to get lemm.ee back online. I hope the rest of your day goes great. Happy Birthday!

[–] TheTurner@lemm.ee 10 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday! No big deal at all!

[–] balssh@lemm.ee 9 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday! Thanks for your service and hope you enjoy your day.

[–] A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

🎉birth

[–] potoo22@programming.dev 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

...

Day

[–] user224 7 points 1 month ago

Happy: the prequel

[–] BossDj@lemm.ee 9 points 1 month ago

Happy Birthday!

[–] gon@lemm.ee 8 points 1 month ago

Well, happy birthday! Sucks about this...

[–] Xanza@lemm.ee 8 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday. Check out fail2ban.

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don’t go to this school, but this seems like a particularly strange instance to attack. Were they scrapers? Which is also an incredibly strange thing to do. Spinning up an instance and directly pulling 6 years of content would be far easier.

[–] Endmaker@ani.social 4 points 1 month ago

I read somewhere that the perpetuators are likely getting some practice in before attacking their actual targets. Lemmy instances just happened to be unlucky enough to be among the victims chosen for this rehearsal.

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 8 points 1 month ago

Huh, I hope it wasn't me with my constant Summit (Lemmy client) refreshes (I was having issues with that app so I was doing a lot of API requests I guess) 🤣

Happy birthday! 🥳

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

Have a happy rest of your birthday sunaurus!

[–] sgbrain7@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

your birthday is the ides of march? sick 🤟

[–] abobla@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

that's crazy, happy birthday!!!!

[–] revanite@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

It seems this borked access for third party apps and the different front ends for Lemmy webpage. It is just showing network error

[–] turbulentMagma@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Are the bot checks interfering with third party apps? I have problems connecting with voyager but on browser it's fine after completing the bot checks

[–] revanite@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago

Same here. My android app and the front ends I use for the webpage can't connect to lemmee still.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 6 points 1 month ago

Nice work! But remember, there are other instances, and as far as I know your users enjoy your services for free. Take it easy along the way.

[–] fairpixel@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday

[–] Dogsoftulkas@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

Thank you for being born!

[–] alecbowles@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

Happy Birthday! I’m using Voyager and experienced some issues and downtime as well. Sneaky bots.

[–] _____@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago

I'm curious about steps you took in reaction to this, of course if sharing compromises the mitigation then by all means, you don't have to

and/or also how do you learn about managing attacks like these ?

[–] illi@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday!

[–] AizawaC47@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago

Happy Birthday!! I hope it was a good one!

[–] scsi@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

Happy birthday!

[–] coldsideofyourpillow@lemmy.cafe 1 points 1 month ago

I'm late (as always -_-), but happy birthday! 🎉

[–] dditty@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

No problem, thanks as always for the hard work, and belated happy birthday!