DDoS attack: on April 24, the Medellin Guru site was attacked by a denial of service attack which shut the site down briefly in the afternoon. We now have DDoS protection.
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack happens when multiple systems flood the bandwidth or resources of a targeted system. A DDoS attack uses more than one unique IP address or machines, often from thousands of hosts infected with malware.
This was a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic on the Medellin Guru website. Several readers contacted us when the website when down yesterday afternoon.
Also, several Medellin Guru readers have noticed a change on the Medellin Guru website, this was due to DDoS protection added on April 24.
NOTE: the Medellin Guru site was not compromised during the attacks. There is no credit card information on the site and no reader personal information is on the site.
EDITOR NOTE: As of September 3 the Medellin Guru website has been attacked by DDoS for 133 days in a row. Also, the Medellin Guru website has been swamped with Spam so no longer permit comments on articles.
EDITOR NOTE on October 28: in late October 2021, DDoS attacks have intensified.
What Happened?
The Medellin Guru website went down three times on April 24. Our hosting company said this was due to a DDoS attack.
Attackers were targeting individual articles on the Medellin Guru site in their attack. And when the hosting company disabled an article that was being attacked, the attackers switched to another article. So, the hosting company had to do a “whack-the-mole” process to keep the site up.
For example, our article about Coronavirus hospitalization was one article that was attacked. Then the attackers switched to another article.
And the Medellin Guru website was attacked again on April 25 and April 26, as can been seen in this graphic of 2.93 million DDoS threats blocked by our DDoS protection from Cloudflare.
DDoS threats blocked by DDoS protection on April 25 and April 26, source Cloudflare
The Medellin Guru website has continues to be attacked for for 35 days up to June 8.
Here are to the 230,690 DDoS threats blocked by DDoS protection for for a period of a week as of September 1,
Here are to the 230,690 DDoS threats blocked by DDoS protection for for a period of a week as of September 1,
Medellin Guru Added DDoS Protection
Since the attackers continued to attack the site, Medellin Guru was forced to DDoS protection on April 24.
Readers, when you access the Medellin Guru site now you may see a brief message from Cloudflare, our DDoS protection solution. that looks like this or if attack are high it may have a CAPTCHA puzzle with photos:
The number of attacks decreased so we were able to remove this message from Cloudflare and the CAPTCHA for a few weeks. But had to turn it on on June 9 in the afternoon due to more attacks. But it is being turned on and off daily depending on the level of attacks.
Message you will see for up to 5 seconds when accessing Medellin Guru, our DDoS protection
Medellin Guru Also Has SPAM Protection
The Medellin Guru website also has SPAM protection. Since the Medellin Guru website was launched nearly four years ago, our SPAM protection has blocked over 70,000 SPAM messages.
Trolls are a major problem in Expat Facebook groups and blogs in Colombia and are a major source of SPAM messages. We have a separate article that looks at the problem of trolls in Colombia.
Trolling is generally defined as creating discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people by posting inflammatory or off-topic messages in an online community.
Do Not Feed the Trolls, photo by Sam Fentress
Social media trolls are people that purposely say something inflammatory and offensive in order to get a rise out of other users. They rant, sometimes even escalate to threatening, post fake news and use derogatory speech.
We love comments from readers and appreciate readers that take the time to share ideas and give feedback. Thank you to everyone who comments on the Medellin Guru site and our Medellin Guru Facebook Group and Sabaneta Expats Facebook Group.
However, we also want our comments to be as useful as possible to all of our readers. While we keep about 80 percent of comments, we will remove these types of comments:
- Harassing comments. While conversations and sharing of different ideas is encouraged, all comments should be respectful towards our contributors and those readers leaving comments.
- Fake news comments. We will not accept any comments with fake news.
- Illegal activities. We will not accept any comments that promote illegal activities.
- Anonymous comments. We only accept comments from people who identify themselves with a name.
On the Medellin Guru blog, all comments are reviewed before they are approved. On our Facebook groups any member can post comments but these groups are actively moderated. We have zero tolerance for trolls.
Medellin Guru Needs Help from Readers
To mitigate this DDoS attack, Medellin Guru needed to add another tool to protect the website.
Medellin Guru needs the help of Readers this month. You can help Medellin Guru by:
- Subscribing to our premium content on Patreon for as little as $3 per month.
- Buying Medellin Guru a Coffee
- Using our Medellin Guru Services for Expats – We partnered to offer visa, health insurance, real estate and Spanish school services to foreigners to help with relocation:
- Visa services with Expatgroup.co
- Insurance services with Insurance agent – including health, homeowners, car and life insurance as well as travel insurance
- Sign up for SURA EPS insurance – a new service from Insurance agent to help with signing up for SURA EPS
- Real estate services with RE/MAX Coffee Realty
- Spanish Classes from OLSA International
The Bottom Line: DDoS Attack: Medellin Guru Site Attacked by Denial of Service Attack
We are sorry for any readers who noticed the Medellin Guru website was down on April 24 briefly in the afternoon for about two hours total. This was due to a DDoS attack.
This DDoS attacks are a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic on the Medellin Guru website. We are fighting daily to keep the site up.
The Medellin Guru website now has DDoS attack protection in place. You will frequently see a brief message now when accessing the Medellin Guru site.
Sign up for the Free Medellin Guru Newsletter – You can see all of the previous Medellin Guru weekly email newsletters and sign up here.
Editors note: updated on July 27, 2021 with information that DDoS attacks have continued on the Medellin Guru website for 95 days.
Editors note: updated on August 4, 2021 with information that DDoS attacks have continued on the Medellin Guru website for 103 days and limits on comments on the Medellin Guru site.
Editors note: updated on August 31, 2021 with information that DDoS attacks have continued on the Medellin Guru website for 130 days and limits on comments on the Medellin Guru site..
Editors note: updated on September 3, 2021 with information that DDoS attacks have continued on the Medellin Guru website for 133 days and limits on comments on the Medellin Guru site..
Editors note: updated on October 28, 2021 with information that DDoS attacks have intensified on the Medellin Guru website so we are looking at adding even more protection.