Just me or is Hughes email down for everyone?

[BirdDog]

Been getting this since early this morning:

[Liz · Accepted solution]

Hi BirdDog, 

Thanks for letting us know, is it still happening now? Nothing's popping up in our reports about email, and we haven't heard elsewhere of similar reports. Amanda and I haven't been able to reproduce that error either.

[MarkJFine]

I normally use Outlook and POP the account, but I just checked and my webmail on zimbra works... Using Ajax and HTML.

That said, a 500 error on a web site usually means the underlying database is getting pounded. I can tell you I've been having a **bleep** of a time with script kiddies doing lots naughty things on my server as well as the main one I administer. Actually had someone hack in two days ago, and someone with repeated automated login attempts killed the database and caused a bunch of posts to not to publish on time (created a 500 error, which killed the WordPress cron).

Also, spam is getting close to spamstorm levels of fake purchase orders, and "desperate to hookup" type things, ransom emails, etc.; as well as web site blog spam.

Seeing lots of nonsense come out of the US, China, Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina... it's rampant right now.

[Liz · Accepted solution]

Hi BirdDog, 

Thanks for letting us know, is it still happening now? Nothing's popping up in our reports about email, and we haven't heard elsewhere of similar reports. Amanda and I haven't been able to reproduce that error either.

[maratsade]

It's working for me. 

@BirdDog wrote:

Been getting this since early this morning:

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[BirdDog · Accepted solution]

Working again so whatever causing it was temporary. Thanks for the replies.

[Liz]

Whew! Glad to hear it BirdDog! Thanks for the update. Have a good weekend!

[BirdDog]

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@Liz wrote:

Whew! Glad to hear it BirdDog! Thanks for the update. Have a good weekend!

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You're welcome. Maybe something like Mark suggested and short lived. You guys have a great weekend also!

[MarkJFine]

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@BirdDog wrote:

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You're welcome. Maybe something like Mark suggested and short lived. You guys have a great weekend also!

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Hopefully short lived. This is really ugly.

Seems there's a botnet that simultaneously probes websites for open relays they can hack into. They are masquerading as normal users with old Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and even blank user-agents (as seen in the web logs).

The same IPs are also responsible for sending email and blog spam with embedded links and virus-ridden files to infect the computers of regular people. This makes individuals part of the botnet and it's replicating widely in Europe and Latin America at an incredible rate.

If it weren't so heinous I'd say it was fascinating to observe, but it's been a real pain to fend off. I'm supposed to be retired. lol

[GabeU]

I'm a little late to this, but mine's working.  I only sign in to it every few months to clean it out, as I only use it for Community notifications, and forwarding them to my normal email, at that.

1760 notifications since I last signed in on July 25th.  😛  

Edit:  Missed your new reply while I was checking it out and writing this reply, BirdDog.  Glad it's working again.  

[maratsade]

"1760 notifications since I last signed in on July 25th"

You're a busy guy!

[GabeU]

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@maratsade wrote:

"1760 notifications since I last signed in on July 25th"

You're a busy guy!

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I was a little surprised, to say the least.