TOPIC: Entire Collection Auction :( Ends 9:00PM 31JUL17

Fred Kessler wrote: Reposting due to crash (sorry if it appears twice)

draco-lich charm #2 $155
charm of enlightenment (just buy)
Edkar's Tool $150

Fred

Future clause : In the event of a server crash or DDOS attack to keep others from bidding, auction will be extended 15 minutes past the end of the server crash.

Ray's ring #2....$60.00

It is amusing just how important TD token bidding is. Well, there was only one thing I would have thought of responding to, and I'm okay with missing out on it, assuming more posts don't suddenly appear after Steve's.

Hate to say it but I really doubt it was a DDOS attack. The site definitely needs a reboot and to be run from a hosted environment like Azure. My VP of IS was on it the other day and was just exasperated when he saw 2-3 second delays between pages.

The baseline code needs a re-write. What is more concerning is the time lags indicate either hardware or build issues. Both would lead to potential exploit routes to get through security.

The site does it's job but is in desperate need for a revamp

Fred

Wow....really weird time for a server crash!

The True Dungeon forums weren't loading for about 5 minutes before the end of the auction, and started loading right at 6.

It is a known that you can take down the forums by spamming them with requests, and I suspect someone was doing this intentionally to jam out others from the auction (or as an act of expert trolling).

In any case, here are some screen shots showing my attempts to bid, and my bid limits with time.

imgur.com/a/cTlUu

I don't expect these bids to win anything as they are past time. It's unfortunate if it's the case that this was malfeasance of someone intentionally taking down the site to protect their bids.

If I were the auction runner, I'd ask Jeff if he can ask the web guys to see if one particular user was spamming requests in this time period, and if so maybe ask them to stop doing that.

I'd suggest future auctioneers in the forums work to structure their auctions to ensure bidding at the last minute is not a good strategy, now that this is out of the bag we can expect it to keep happening.

Do we have an extra 15 due to crash or not?

Twolf's Helm of the Wild - $230
Druegar's Death Die - $260
Ioun Stone Topaz Trilliant - $230

I am a little miffed about the server crash I was going to bid $105 on the Viper shirt. Two times today once on eBay and now TD. Oh well

I hope it wasn't someone doing it on purpose. I had submitted mine prior to the final bell but started getting the errors (I think we all did).


Again, though, it goes to the current site design. You can do a hosted site with controls for that kind of activity and short of someone doing a DDS attack from tens of thousands of devices simultaneously, you'd be fine. I'll send Jeff some referrals of good companies that do this type of work that I've hired before. It's not cheap but the costs of being hacked are far worse (if you could be brought down by a single user, it's unlikely any PII is completely safe).

Fred

Fred Kessler wrote: I hope it wasn't someone doing it on purpose. I had submitted mine prior to the final bell but started getting the errors (I think we all did).


Again, though, it goes to the current site design. You can do a hosted site with controls for that kind of activity and short of someone doing a DDS attack from tens of thousands of devices simultaneously, you'd be fine. I'll send Jeff some referrals of good companies that do this type of work that I've hired before. It's not cheap but the costs of being hacked are far worse (if you could be brought down by a single user, it's unlikely any PII is completely safe).

Fred

I think you may be dramatically overestimating the technical sophistication needed to temporarily brown out the TD forums.

A single user can trigger this behavior by opening new tabs at a reasonable human-clicking speed.

Source: I've done it by accident before.

I am starting to get the impression this is run an a stand alone computer just attached to a dsl line. Wow. Interestingly, the forums are directly linked to the primary site (not separate builds). The entire TD site was down. The problem is, a well designed site with the complexity this requires starts at $20k. TD is a hobbist business so that would be cash taken right out of Jeff and his family's hands.

Fred

Has there been any word from the group running the auction?