The popular Medellin Guru blog in Colombia has been under attack for over 10 months with millions of DDoS attacks, SPAM, fake comments and emails.
The attacks started with a DDoS attack: on April 24. And the Medellin Guru site was attacked by a denial of service attack which shut the site down briefly in the afternoon on April 24.
After the DDoS attack, the attacks increased other areas with massive increases in SPAM, fake emails, fake comments and even attacks on Social Media.
All of this is a malicious attempt to shut down the Medellin Guru website. We are now battling daily to try to keep the website up and running and need the help of readers.
EDITOR NOTE: article is updated on March 12, 2022 that attacks via fake email have intensified the past few weeks also DDoS attacks have continued.
DDoS Attack was First
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 the following 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
The Medellin Guru site continues to be attacked daily by DDoS.
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:
Message you will see for up to 5 seconds when accessing Medellin Guru, DDoS protection
The number of attacks decreased so we were able to remove this message from Cloudflare and the CAPTCHA for a few weeks a few months ago But had to turn it on on June 9 in the afternoon due to more attacks. But we will turn it back off if we see attacks decrease again. We now turn it on and off as needed.
Also there have been other attacks trying to hack the Medellin Guru website and gain access to the admin account.
Editor note starting on December 22, due to attacks intensifying the past few weeks, we sometimes had to turn of access to Medellin Guru from the U.S., Canada or the UK where the majority of attacks are coming from. This is temporary and will be turned back on when attacks drop and is normally in the afternoon or evening.
When we turn off access you will see a Security Error Message like this.
Error message when a country is blocked from Medellin Guru
If you get this error message, you can still access Medellin Guru from other countries such as Mexico. using a VPN.
DDos attacks on Medellin Guru on December 7, 2021
On December 7, 2021, we received over 35,000 attacks as seen in the above graphic. If we did not block access to a few countries where most attacks were coming from, the Medellín Guru website would be taken down by the attacks for the entire world, as the website is designed to only handle about 4,000 to 5,000 users per day.
Next Was a Massive Increase in SPAM
The Medellin Guru website also has SPAM protection since the Medellin Guru website was launched nearly four years ago
After the DDoS attack we experienced a massive increase in SPAM messages in comments on the Medellin Guru site.
As of October 6, we had to turn off comments on all posts on the Medellin Guru website as we are being attacked by over 200 SPAM per day.
Next Was a Massive Increase in Fake Emails
After the SPAM attack, Medellin Guru was attacked by hundreds of fake emails weekly, with most of these emails being fake.
We had to change our policy about answering reader questions due to a big increase of questions in the past month that we are unable to handle and many fake emails.
Our new policy for answers questions is as follows:
It is no longer possible to respond to all questions from readers for free. For Medellin Guru paying Patreon subscribers we will answer but this is NOT unlimited Q&A. We have Expat consultations if you have many questions.
The following is our new priority for responding to questions, in order:
- Medellin Guru Expat consultations, a call or in-person meeting will be scheduled.
- From Patreon subscribers, within 4-6 hours, but not on weekends.
- On Medellin Guru Facebook page, Medellin Guru Facebook groupand Sabaneta Expats Facebook group, within 12 to 15 hours, as this benefits many readers. NOTE we do not answer Facebook PMs due to the high volume and some fakes.
- On our Twitter and Instagram, we will no longer respond to questions on these two Social media sites.
March 5, 2022 update: The attack of fake emails has continued to increase so we have a new policy. We received hundreds of fake emails. If you are not a Patreon subscriber, we will not answer your question.
We also turned off the ability to send questions from the Medellin Guru, due to thousands of fake emails being sent.
Next Attack is on Social Media.
Next, we discovered that Medellin Guru and our partners were being attacked on social media, particularly on Facebook.
This included fake comments about bad experiences using our partners.
So, now on Medellin Guru Facebook groups these groups are heavily moderated and many comments are deleted that are fakes or do not meet the group rules. We also monitor other Facebook groups.
Medellin Guru Needs Help from Readers
With all the attacks, we are unable to publish as much new content as we did in the past. So, we would like to add help. So, we need the help of readers.
You can Buy us a Coffee
You can support us by buying us a coffee for only $3 (or more than one coffee).
This is essentially a one time donation.
Buy me a coffee
You can also help Medellin Guru by:
- Subscribing to our premium content on Patreon for as little as $3 per month.
- 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 Elefun
The Bottom Line – Medellin Guru Blog Under Attack for Nine Months
The popular Medellin Guru blog in Colombia has been under attack for over nine months with millions of DDoS attacks, SPAM, fake comments and emails.
This is a malicious attempt for over 10 months to shut down the Medellin Guru website.
Has Medellin Guru helped you? We are asking for the help of readers.
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Editor note: updated on March 12, 2022, with current information about attacks continuing on Medellin Guru for a total of over 10 months.