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Rolf

Recent server freezes

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As you noticed the servers froze the night to sunday and the night to today.

The reason is still not totally obvious but it could be the cause of a DDOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddos#Distributed_attack since that is what brought them down last saturday. I have added some code to prevent that from happening as easily again and will add even more.

Let me raise a finger of warning to you who did this - internet is a big place but you are a very small person when you get the wrong attention from your government. I don't think that you want to ruin your life for the few hollow laughs you get by pressing a few buttons. Think carefully about that.

Me and Egal have found and changed another thing that could cause the server freezes but have not yet updated the servers with that code. Since I am movin the office today and tomorrow I have limited access and we'll run this version until wednesday probably. If the servers freeze again I will retrieve more diagnostics and switch code anyways since it is uploaded.

In the instances where stuff was not saved to the database we regrettably have to invoke our no reimbursement policy. I heard that there could have been a few items and creatures that were lost and we have no good way of verifying your claims in a fair way. You may also look for them where they may have been an hour before the freeze. Please don't ask the gms for this since they can not create items or creatures for you.

If you purchased silver coins or premium time in the web shop that you did not receive, please email me the paypal transaction id and I'll sort it out until or on Wednesday though. Same if you performed a large monetary transaction that was lost. Note that frauds are bannable and the server logs are saved separate from the database so your claims can be easily detected as such.

Forth!

Rolf

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Bleh, so this is what's been taking away from dev time?

Douche bags.

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Can't you track them through their ISP and such? I bet it's those guys who set up the Phishing site and got angry when you banned them.

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Thanks! This will stop all them whinners on Kchat complaining about "Rolf needs more server to prevent the crashes".

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Thanks! This will stop all them whinners on Kchat complaining about "Rolf needs more server to prevent the crashes".

Would take their deaths to stop that I think...

Wish people wouldn't mess with the servers so we could play!

Ty Rolf for working on all this.

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Hmm if Wurm is getting enough attention for DDOS attacks, I suppose there is a silver lining there.  ::)

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Can't you track them through their ISP and such? I bet it's those guys who set up the Phishing site and got angry when you banned them.

The chance of finding the person who did it is fairly small, as a DDoS attack utilises 100s or 1000s of hacked PC's to attack.

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Let me raise a finger of warning to you who did this - internet is a big place but you are a very small person when you get the wrong attention from your government. I don't think that you want to ruin your life for the few hollow laughs you get by pressing a few buttons. Think carefully about that.

This just fuels the fire really and assuming it is an intentional DDOS then this would just make them do it again.

Are you 100% positive that they are DDOS in the first place and not something else? Do you have the traffic logs?

I should also point out that it's possible that it's an automatic DDOS. JRE can get infected with DDOS Trojans and it would only take one person that is infected to play Wurm to add the server ip to a 'hit list'  Although highly unlikely that this is the case, but those kind of DDOS attacks do exist.

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So this is what's been causing the server to go down every night.

Well Rolf, I hope you find a way to block this thing.

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From what I am seeing I have this unshakable feeling that whoever is attacking is a current player.

In my timezone (pacific) when it crashes it is always seems to be an hour or two before I would normally go to sleep, the east coast would probably be when they are going to bed. It feels to me like it's planned to go ahead to crash the server overnight so they (and consequently everyone else) get 5 hours of sleep every day.  :-\

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From what I am seeing I have this unshakable feeling that whoever is attacking is a current player.

In my timezone (pacific) when it crashes it is always seems to be an hour or two before I would normally go to sleep, the east coast would probably be when they are going to bed. It feels to me like it's planned to go ahead to crash the server overnight so they (and consequently everyone else) get 5 hours of sleep every day.  :-\

an attack from an existing player who has too many alts for using sleep bonus is a very acceptable theory.Rolf, i hope you find a way to prevent this permanently.may the force be with you :)

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If the reason is a DDoS then I would recommend that Rolf does not allocate sleep bonus until he is able to counter it. This assumes that whoever is doing it is doing so to get said bonus. Take away the reason, maybe reduce the problem.

Of course if its actually server instability that's a different matter altogether.

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Its all just theories at this point. But if it is a targetted DDoS attack, made intentionally, then i hope that whoever is doing it didnt think that it would get him anything.

I mean, if you attack something on the internet with the purpose of copying software, then atleast there is a tangible gain to be had. To attack because you have been slighted doesnt really add anything other than the contempt of your fellow man.

But then again, i suppose there are people who get aroused by that too.

Oh well...

Thanks for the heads up, Rolf. Hang in there...

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I sincerely doubt whoever is doing it is doing it form something as petty as sleep bonus. Come on, people.

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I've lost approximately 6 hours of terrain modifications the last 2 nights in a row. Mines are rolled back to the previous day but when you mine out the wall for the second and third time your rock shards from the previous day are uncovered.  Trees that are cut down are laying on the ground, but the same tree reappears growing again.

How does denial of service explain that?  It appears the server (or atleast the app running on it) is crashing and not saving the terrain.  Items on the ground or in inventory are not affected.  Inability to progress in my projects has become very frustrating.  I guess I need to concentrate on skills or something until we get beyond this.  I really love this game but the last few days have been very discouraging.

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terrain doesn't save as often as other things.

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It's frustrating when that happens with terrain & stuff, but I thought I would explain why. Basically, the terrain is saved in a different way to items.

Items are saved as soon as they are moved, created, imped, whatever.

The terrain is saved in sections I forget how long it takes now, but basically it's done 1 row at a time & is cyclical. It takes several hours for the entire map to get saved. So it's quite common to find terrain changes undone after any crash. Proper maintenance shut downs are different. Basically, it kicks everyone off so it doesn't have to track their actions & concentrates on saving the terrain. This is partly why the regular maintenance take so long.

I'm at work when these servers have been happening so I am not certain, but I hear that they are at the same time every day. So my suggestion, until things settle down, is to avoid modifying the terrain for several hours before the usual time. I think it's 2 hours, but I'm probably wrong.

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Hrm .. well I will accept the DDOS explanation since I know at least one person who clearly has a grudge against Wurm.

Perhaps you enforce a requirement for a certain version of the JRE and implement a platform specific launcher that checksums that?

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WRT this issue - please implement integrity polling to ensure that our clients are not being used as vehicles for DDOS.

I am certain that no actual player would prefer sleep bonus over 3 hours downtime at random times as would be caused by a malicious hacker.

Personally, I would prefer a little lag to 3 hours of server downtime.

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i was playing WoW on one of biggest private servers back then. And that server suffered DDOS attacks too, but GMs managed to track the guy down. Not sure what happened to him next, only remember he was attackin from Singapour. He wanted to force GMs to implement some changes he wanted. Ill try to find that server and their forum (might not be there anymore, a lot time has passed).

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