My webhost, Deflect, has provided me with a report on the DDOS attack mounted against this site earlier this week. I’m keeping the report private so as not to allow future hackers access to information that might permit them to penetrate my host’s mitigation measures. The report says that the site was attacked via a botnet consisting of other WordPress sites. Unfortunately, since WP is one of the most popular blog hosting platforms with a large number of users, that means there are many poorly defended websites. All it takes is for a site with poor password protection or some other exploitable weakness to be hijacked for this web vandalism. In addition, WordPress enables a useless feature permitting sites to send pingbacks and talkbacks when they link to other sites. It was this feature which permitted the hackers to attack my site. Unfortunately, WordPress refuses to disable pingbacks despite the serious opportunity they offer to attack their users’ sites. And even if a WP user turns off this feature, it does not prevent the attack since it is a native feature built into the product.
The attack lasted for approximately twelve minutes. However, the site was down for a longer period of time. Deflect continue to investigate the lag time and what caused it.
The report also notes that the attack originated from the IP address 162.248.225.107. That IP is associated with a company called Host Solution Ltd. It is a Russian company whose servers use the domain king-servers.com. Deflect says that this web host is known as a “bullet proof hosting provider.” However, it appears that in this case it let a rotten apple into the bunch.
I also received a comment (which was not published) with threatened further cyber-attacks against the site. Since this is the third cyber-attack in the past decade, that seems obvious.
Whoever orchestrated this attack is acting either officially or unofficially on behalf of Israeli interests as outlined in numerous statements from the strategic affairs ministry, which has announced open season on critics of Israel. The ministry has elaborated on a campaign of harassment, cyber-attacks, sabotage and dirty ops intended to sabotage such activism. Just as countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and North Korea have engaged in social media trolling and hacking, Israel has now entered the business in a big way.
The method used in the DDOS attack is called a pingback attack, which is explained technically here.
Is the “reality” behind King Servers and Host Solutions LTD really “simple”? Searching both in Google and Yandex produces asthonishing little information of them. That would not be possible if these are real commercial companies and/or had been used for longer time in major revealed “Russian operations”.
In 2016 King Servers were claimed to be used in the hacks against the US democratic party. CEO Vladimir Fomenko’s comment to that claim.
King Servers internet pages IP is in Netherlands, not in Russian Federation. The company has servers in Netherlands, USA, Britain (at least before in past years) and claimed to have in Russia. The fact that it has pages in Russian language is not exactly a proof of its close links to Russian state. King Servers pages are also in English. Would western intelligence allow Russian state and GRU have “secret” server stations in USA, GB and Netherlands, which would allow Russians to make “hostile secret visits”? I seriously doubt that. But for western intelligence and certain companies such server company which could be when needed claimed to be Russian is a lottery victory.
King Servers has had a page in Wikipedia. It has been deleted a couple of times. From Wikipedia’s deletion log
Correct name: Hosting Solution ltd.
Street: Data Center:
Street: Hosting Solution Ltd.
Street: C/O Hurricane Electric
Street: 48233 Warm Springs Blvd
City: Fremont CA
Company under this name was briefly registered in London – here .
Hosting Soluton Ltd. [KINGSERVERS] has most servers located in the USA and The Netherlands.