Today, like the past few days, we have had some downtime. Apparently some script kids are enjoying themselves by targeting our server (and others). Sorry for the inconvenience.
Most of these 'attacks' are targeted at the database, but some are more ddos-like and can be mitigated by using a CDN.
Some other Lemmy servers are using Cloudflare, so we know that works. Therefore we have chosen Cloudflare as CDN / DDOS protection platform for now. We will look into other options, but we needed something to be implemented asap.
For the other attacks, we are using them to investigate and implement measures like rate limiting etc.
I wonder now with the semi-adversarial/semi-cooperative nature between lemmy instances, if wer'e not going to see more DDOS and other types of raids happening because a different instance has an ax to grind against yours. Say between you defederated them, or they consider your instance too big etc.
I saw a post "Lemmy seems to have way more leftists than xyz." So I wouldn't be surprised to find it's political nonsense, people attacking a site they see as "the left."
I can see it now, a lemmy cold war of sorts where the "leftists" and "socialists" and "communists" are arguing non-stop over the definition of those terms and who is worst amongst them