neowin under attack Update: Neowin slow downs due to botnets (from Dec 7-9)

[Steven P. Administrators]

Appears we are under attack from several botnets originating from the U.S., India, and Brazil.

Cloudflare is able to block much of it, but a lot is still getting through causing slow page loads as of today.

Just a heads up for those wondering why everything slowed down. Our server guy @DaveLegg is monitoring it.

[cork1958]

I haven't been able to load the site at all for the last 2 hours. Checked a couple of down detector type sites and both said Neowin was down for everyone. Running pretty fast for me now though.

Edited December 8, 2025 by cork1958

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 08/12/2025 at 13:29, cork1958 said:

I haven't been able to load the site at all for the last 2 hours. Checked a couple of down detector type sites and both said Neowin was down for everyone. Running pretty fast for me now though.

Yeah we implemented the challenge for everyone and numbers have fallen to normal levels again.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Banned someone from one of those countries recently?

I kid... but it's stunningly obvious that Neowin is very much on a list of sites that paid disinformation is being pushed to by trolls and potentially bots.

[Barney T. Administrators]

It's much better now. The site also verifies that we are human!

Barney

[FloatingFatMan]

On 08/12/2025 at 13:22, Barney T. said:

It's much better now. The site also verifies that we are human!

Barney

Ah, I wondered why Neowin suddenly started asking me that.  It doesn't seem to like when my VPN switches IP either.

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 09/12/2025 at 15:46, FloatingFatMan said:

Ah, I wondered why Neowin suddenly started asking me that.

All the cool kids sites have it! 😂

[Zinomian]

On 09/12/2025 at 10:07, Steven P. said:

All the cool kids sites have it! 😂

so....what are the bots doing? just trying to "hit" the page? or are they actually trying to login, create accounts? Just curious....it sucks you can't have a simple informative site without some a*hole trying to take it down.

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 09/12/2025 at 17:41, Zinomian said:

so....what are the bots doing? just trying to "hit" the page? or are they actually trying to login, create accounts? Just curious....it sucks you can't have a simple informative site without some a*hole trying to take it down.

The intent was to cause a DDoS so it doesn't matter what they were accessing, just anything public facing.

A week before that we had a wave of spam originating from India, some even made it through to the forums before it was reported (making a link, but only linking to the period of a sentence). With such targeted spam attacks, all the spammer cares about is verifying the link made it online to get payment, and they do this tens of thousands of times online to earn whatever few bucks the originating link is paying them to do it.

We have safeguards against spammers too, but if it is a targeted attack they are a bit more patient and it takes more effort to create a genuine member account that isn't post moderated  

People don't realize the amount of time we waste on this sort of thing, but we choose this life, and manage our own hardware so.... 😛 

[Zinomian]

On 09/12/2025 at 12:23, Steven P. said:

People don't realize the amount of time we waste on this sort of thing, but we choose this life, and manage our own hardware so.... 😛 

Thank you for all the time the staff puts in.....great website!

[Steven P. Administrators]

Neowin will be inaccessible for a short period due to a network migration.

Note from our server guy:

 

Quote

Fyi there's a planned upgrade of the networking at the data center starting in about 40 minutes, will be a short period of downtime while they migrate us

If you can access two hours after this post was made, then the migration was a success.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

On 09/12/2025 at 18:23, Steven P. said:

Neowin will be inaccessible for a short period due to a network migration.

Note from our server guy:

 

If you can access two hours after this post was made, then the migration was a success.

"Posted 2 hours ago"

So... yuh

[wingliston]

Is that why RSS feeds no longer work in RSSGuard? 

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 09/12/2025 at 23:46, wingliston said:

Is that why RSS feeds no longer work in RSSGuard? 

I've asked our dev to have a look.

[CloudEngineer]

getting kidd0 flashbacks

[Matthew S.]

On 08/12/2025 at 08:22, Barney T. said:

It's much better now. The site also verifies that we are human!

Barney

Speak for yourself 😛 lol

[DaveLegg Developer]

On 09/12/2025 at 22:50, Steven P. said:

I've asked our dev to have a look.

I've had a look, and tweaked a couple of rules. If it's still not working, can you let me know the URL of the feed you're trying to use, and I can double check the specific feed

[wingliston]

On 10/12/2025 at 12:36, DaveLegg said:

I've had a look, and tweaked a couple of rules. If it's still not working, can you let me know the URL of the feed you're trying to use, and I can double check the specific feed

Its working again! Thanks. I always use. https://www.neowin.net/news/rss/

[neufuse Veteran]

Is this happening again because holy cow the site is either not responding for me or slow as heck or random Cloudflare challenges 

[hellowalkman Reporter]

On 15/12/2025 at 01:33, neufuse said:

Is this happening again because holy cow the site is either not responding for me or slow as heck or random Cloudflare challenges 

yeah i am having problems too ATM

[MtnDewCodeRedFreak]

Ohh wow. I just learned abt this. Hope everything’s okay, Steven. 

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 20/12/2025 at 05:50, MtnDewCodeRedFreak said:

Ohh wow. I just learned abt this. Hope everything’s okay, Steven. 

We've had a ton of issues moving to Cloudflare, and now we're among all the websites that go down when Cloudflare goes down  But it is this, or have our resources get abused by botnets.

Thanks for the message, nice to see you back!

[neufuse Veteran]

On 20/12/2025 at 05:17, Steven P. said:

We've had a ton of issues moving to Cloudflare, and now we're among all the websites that go down when Cloudflare goes down  But it is this, or have our resources get abused by botnets.

Thanks for the message, nice to see you back!

yesterday our website went down because of CF (is it really cloudflare or something else that is CF.,..cluster...?) anyways they must of added more Managed rules for new attack vectors in the WAF and we didnt know that  broke our AJAX calls and our site broke....had to go in on my day off to fix it..... 🤪

[Steven P. Administrators]

On 21/12/2025 at 01:58, neufuse said:

yesterday our website went down because of CF (is it really cloudflare or something else that is CF.,..cluster...?) anyways they must of added more Managed rules for new attack vectors in the WAF and we didnt know that  broke our AJAX calls and our site broke....had to go in on my day off to fix it..... 🤪

All of us when Cloudflare and man-in-the-middle services make changes without informing us (or pushes an untested update to their servers) 😂