this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025

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Meta (lemm.ee)

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223

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

submitted 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by sunaurus@lemm.ee to c/meta@lemm.ee

49 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 49 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] gregs_gumption@lemm.ee 66 points 20 hours ago

Thanks for the work, happy birthday!

[–] Fiction@lemm.ee 34 points 20 hours ago

Thank you! Happy birthday!

[–] kestrelx@lemm.ee 27 points 20 hours ago

Happy birthday!

[–] You_are_dust@lemm.ee 20 points 20 hours ago

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

[–] makingrain@lemm.ee 19 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Just enjoy your birthday! Sweet 21.

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

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

[–] sunaurus@lemm.ee 16 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Definitely not 😄

[–] oddspinnaker@lemm.ee 10 points 18 hours ago

Well you don’t look a day over 21…

[–] aeharding@vger.social 18 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

❤️

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 12 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] aeharding@vger.social 16 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

bc I made your client

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 10 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours 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 9 points 18 hours ago

He is the CEO of lemmy.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 18 hours ago

Happy birthday!

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 12 points 14 hours ago

Happy birthday! 🎂

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 12 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours 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)

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 12 points 15 hours 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.

[–] Technoworcester@lemm.ee 12 points 20 hours ago

Happy birthday! Thanks for all your hard work.

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 12 points 15 hours ago

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

[–] RagingHungryPanda@lemm.ee 11 points 20 hours ago

Happy birthday!

[–] TheTurner@lemm.ee 10 points 20 hours ago

Happy birthday! No big deal at all!

[–] Lojcs@lemm.ee 10 points 20 hours ago

Happy birthday!

[–] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 10 points 20 hours ago

Happy birthday!!! <3

[–] Vyvanse@lemm.ee 10 points 20 hours 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!

[–] A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

🎉birth

[–] potoo22@programming.dev 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

...

Day

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 17 hours ago

Happy: the prequel

[–] balssh@lemm.ee 9 points 20 hours ago

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

[–] BossDj@lemm.ee 9 points 17 hours ago

Happy Birthday!

[–] Gullible@sh.itjust.works 8 points 20 hours 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 15 hours 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.

[–] Xanza@lemm.ee 8 points 17 hours ago

Happy birthday. Check out fail2ban.

[–] gon@lemm.ee 8 points 20 hours ago

Well, happy birthday! Sucks about this...

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 8 points 20 hours 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! 🥳

[–] abobla@lemm.ee 7 points 16 hours ago

that's crazy, happy birthday!!!!

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 7 points 11 hours ago

Have a happy rest of your birthday sunaurus!

[–] sgbrain7@lemm.ee 7 points 20 hours ago

your birthday is the ides of march? sick 🤟

[–] revanite@lemm.ee 6 points 12 hours ago

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

[–] Dogsoftulkas@lemm.ee 6 points 18 hours ago

Thank you for being born!

[–] fairpixel@lemm.ee 6 points 19 hours ago

Happy birthday

[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 5 points 19 hours 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.

[–] turbulentMagma@lemm.ee 5 points 14 hours 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 4 points 12 hours ago

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

[–] _____@lemm.ee 4 points 11 hours 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 ?

[–] alecbowles@lemm.ee 3 points 3 hours ago

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

[–] illi@lemm.ee 3 points 19 hours ago

Happy birthday!

[–] dditty@lemm.ee 1 points 5 hours ago

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

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

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

[–] scsi@lemm.ee 1 points 4 hours ago

Happy birthday!