What sort of happened is that we had a bunch of bots descend on the site and execute a bunch of batch searches of the user list, as well as the posts.
These things get more and more sophisticated so it's not just a matter of blocking their IPs.
I made some changes to one of the config files that discards blanket wildcard searches (more specifically throws a 403 Forbidden error). This lets the search die before it hits the CPU resources of our shared hosting environment (why they throttled us).
In addition to this, we were allowing users that were "waiting for email confirmation" to search the site. These requests will now get discarded by vBulletin before it hits the CPU (403 again).
The down side for now is that the "New Posts" button is broken. I wll see if I can trap this specific activity and keep allowing it without exposing ourselves to risk.
I will keep some tabs on the site in the next several days to make sure I'm as smart as I think I am.
Cheers, Lord help our Colts,
Pez
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** 2017 Premier league champion **
"I want to dominate all my opponents, and take their will away to play the game, by each play, and finishing them past the whistle."
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