Server/Forum Problems? - READ!

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Ribsey
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Server/Forum Problems? - READ!

Post by Ribsey » Tue Jun 14, 2016 5:43 pm

If you are experiencing issues with the sever and/or forums, then you may not be alone. Many other players are experiencing these issues and we ask for you not to post support threads regarding it. These will only clog the section up and mean other support threads will get lost.

At the time of writing this topic (June 14th, 2016) Mmartin has posted the following update regarding the SERVER: viewtopic.php?f=64&t=547912#p7060710
Mmartin wrote:Since I see a lot of misinformation and a lot of topics popping up about the issues, I feel that a couple things should be clarified:

There are two types of attacks we face most of the time:
  • Network attack / DDOS - the attacker sends a bunch of connections to our network, causing it to be stressed. During light attacks to the network layer, the server has trouble responding to requests of normal players and causes packet loss - essentially making you desynced or lag in-game. If the attack is too strong, it causes the server to be unable to accept new connections and respond to legit requests at all, the server doesn't show for anyone and nobody can connect.
  • Application layer attack - the attacker designed a program specifically made to attack the SA:MP server. This doesn't necessarily send a large amount of packets, but the packets are structured in a way so they cause harm to the server application. Because of them not being that frequent, they don't get picked up by the anti-DDOS filter. Modern attack programs like that are made so they appear like messages coming from a regular player, so they don't get picked up by other filters either. This attack might cause the server application to not respond, or to misbehave - act how it shouldn't.
We faced regular DDOS for as long as I remember. We have been successfully shielded against DDOS for around two years now, we haven't been down to a network attack more than a handful amount of times. That's very impressive, if you think that during the summer of 2012, the server was completely down for everyone for almost a month.

What we're facing now is an application-layer attack. In order for us to be able to fix it, we need to analyze all traffic going in and out of the server and look for abnormalities, and filter them out. That's what we and the experts from our hosts are working on right now.

Switching the host seems like an easy solution, but trust me, if there was an easy solution to this, we would have already done it. Switching the host would most likely cause us to go back to square one - being down to DDOS for weeks, because we already have the best DDOS protection on the market available for us.

I hope that this post explains why it's taking so long (a very relative term, as we're no longer used to month-long downtimes like we used to be), some people like to ruin the fun for others and some have to work on stopping them. I'll still update you on all changes that happen, but for now, just stay strong everyone.

Also, all existing donation packages have been extended by two weeks for now.

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