Site slowed to a crawl, bot attack?

[lebowski99]

My site has been extremely sluggish in the past few days and the natives are getting restless. I use hostgator for my web hosting service. After checking several things, they sent me this response (I have subbed "XXXXXX" for my forum name):

Hello,

I have reviewed this support ticket. After reviewing this issue I believe the issue is that your VB forum is being attacked, in particular file

/home/XXXXXX/public_html/register.php

The server's ModSecurity rules are blocking the attack however since so many hit are being made to [ http://XXXXXX.com/register.php ] your HostGator is hitting the memory limit and max connections per HostGator's TOS:

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=
[msg "Blacklisted IP Address for POST data StopForumSpam List"] [hostname "www.XXXXXX.com"] [uri "/register.php"] [unique_id "TzwgKK54CyIAAAjOYIgAAADk"]
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

I highly suggest setting up some type of spam protection system on your VB forums so that web bots are not attempting to registrar accounts. I believe this will significantly reduce the number of ModSecurity rules and memory limits on your account and in return make your VB to loading a run properly.

I am a little skeptical, but I suppose he could be right. In either case, I am at a complete loss as to how I should proceed to solve the problem.

Any suggestions?

[snakes1100]

Is this site running as a vhost acct or on a vps/dedicated server?

[lebowski99]

Originally Posted by snakes1100

Is this site running as a vhost acct or on a vps/dedicated server?

Just a standard vhost account.

I did a little digging and found this site describing the robots.txt file:

http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

Most robots check for this file when first coming to a site and you can use the file to tell them to go away or to stay away from certain files and subfolders. I created a file and listed register.php, newthread.php, search.php, login.php, etc. Seems to be humming along now without any lag, but it has only been a couple of hours so I will keep my fingers crossed.

[Simon Lloyd]

Check out my Ban Spiders by User Agent in my signature, this will help you rid yourself of those bots that don't obey robots.txt like Baiduspider they'll have hundreds of bots crawling your site at any one time!

[lebowski99]

Thanks Simon. I just installed your plug-in.

I think it is working a little better since adding the robots.txt file. Hopefully this plug-in will improve performance further.

[Simon Lloyd]

Good to hear that, mark it installed in the thread then any issues post there andi'll do what i can to help

[DAMINK]

I had to leave hostgator myself recently because of errors.
Weeks of support tickets and denials on there part.
They gave me a variety of reasons as to why its not there fault.
Moved host and all my errors stopped. You be the judge.
Oh and since i moved i dont get ip banned by my host anymore lolz.
There support is fast no question. But not always helpful.

[lebowski99]

DAMINK, that sounds about right. Very quick, but mostly useless replies.

What hosting company do you use now?

[meaters]

Recently there has been a bot attack on HostGator, they hide it and don't admit but I've seen whole communities reduced to whie pages by search bots, especially Baidu.

Baidu bots can destroy a vbulletin communities but overwhelming it with requests for attachments/threads, more than a hundred at a time.

They are persistent, intrusive and just won't go away.

HostGator support sucks.

[DAMINK]

Originally Posted by meaters

Recently there has been a bot attack on HostGator, they hide it and don't admit but I've seen whole communities reduced to whie pages by search bots, especially Baidu.

Baidu bots can destroy a vbulletin communities but overwhelming it with requests for attachments/threads, more than a hundred at a time.

They are persistent, intrusive and just won't go away.

HostGator support sucks.

There is a mod here that bans the Baidu bot.
I had a bit of trouble with that bot actually when i was hosted on hostgator.
The mod stopped it in its tracks.
Highly recommend it actually.
Sorry no link to mod i was in a rush when i posted this.