Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

with all the crap going on and me digging through the site chasing germans like some mad dog of the 75th regiment, you'd think i would have remembered to renew it... but no.. i'm a clown...

we should be good now, though.

Damn Huns

I'll let Drew explain it, but it's actually much more worrisome than the Germans.

man that went right over my head

is there going to be a cfb51 or not

I just am not understanding whats going on

the site isn't going anywhere.  we're solid as a rock programmatically, which is why these last few weeks have been baffling.  the server is solid as a rock, too... it's capacity across 16 cores has never been above 1.0%.  it's usually about .25%, which is to say it's a quarter of a percentage in one of 16 cores (which means the comparison for performance isn't 100%, it's 1600%).  it is like driving a Ferrari F40 in a funeral procession as it's sole purpose.  

we were noticed, and I've known that a long time.  i don't know if i saw it when it happened, but i saw it a long time ago and still see those folks come poking back around... they're interested in A51 almost exclusively.  

then, a script was deployed which spoofed the DNS record- broadcast it... it's like a trader shouting on the floor of the exchange- when something changes, they start shouting and eventually everyone notices.  when you type the domain name in your browser a computer doesn't know what that means- it speaks numbers and not the thousands of languages out there- so... it looks in a table to see what the domain name equals.  that number is your IP address... it's called 'resolving'.. in effort to make this as fast as possible, there are servers staged at various locations across the planet that do the translation... its done that way so not one place gets bottlenecked with traffic, and if that one place gets broken the entire world doesn't crash. 

so a script was launched that destroyed the IP-to-domain name configuration.  after a while all the DNS servers heard it.  

not only are there official DNS servers staged, ISP's and other major outlets store them too- they want to be quick as possible to serve a page to someone, so instead of doing the honorable thing they just check in with the official DNS servers to see if anything has changed.. they do it at intervals only they know.  

so... every official DNS server lost our record.  many ISP's and other major services followed their lead.  

attached to the DNS record is something called TTL... stands for TIME TO LIVE.  this is basically an offering that tells the DNS servers "hey, you don't need to check back to see if it's changed for X number of seconds"... most folks set these to 24 hours, some a week, and some a year.  setting it longer than 24 hours means if there is a change in your IP address that YOU made, it'll be at least 24 hours before the DNS servers 'listen' to you again.  

our TTL was changed to some massive number i didn't even take time to divide by 60 (seconds) and divide that by 60 (minutes) and then 24 hours to see how long it would be before the DNS servers would 'listen' to us again... this was part of the script.  i'll tell you with confidence it was over 10 years.  it was a big ol number.  THAT is how long they wanted us to wait until we'd be able to correct the problem.  

this wasn't a kid hacking.. this wasn't organized crime trying to overtake resources.. this was done to deny people access to the site in a way that would make the domain name and IP useless for however long that TTL was.  i don't think they're much worried about how michigan is recruiting or is Iowa will compete next season... they're interested in communications taking place in that board well south of this one.  and they just took a shot to remove it by removing the whole shebang. 

and i'm pissed.  

It's Putin's fault. He hates college football. 

So someone got so big mad in the politics board, they tried to burn down the site?

As a person who is too online, even I think that's TOO online.

Had to be a Californian.